Where has the day gone?

Geesh! Could time slow down, just for a bit? Here it is, already suppertime and I still haven't had a chance to update today. We went camping this past weekend and as usual I have mountains of work to do.

In the interest of time and potential boredom, I'll spare you the rundown of the weekend. I'll just say that we had a lot of fun despite the cruddy weather. I'm sure the people we went with were wondering how they found themselves out in the cold with a family of cranks. I feel like we (our family) all whined the entire weekend. So be it!

This is one of my favorite pictures from the weekend. We were on our way back home and stopped at an overlook to have one last bonfire and roast some hotdogs. I love the view from this point!!

I got two packages of lining fabric to use for pouches from fabric.com this afternoon. Our almost-five year old got to open the packages and take the stickers off each piece. (quite a treat for her!) She then decided to lay them all out on the floor and roll each one into a pulla. (A type of Finnish coffee cake of sorts. She made them one time with my sister and it was a total hit. She "makes" them out of anything that she can roll up.) I love how her tongue is hanging out of her mouth as she concentrates on her pulla.

Shhhh!! Don't tell my husband that I did find a few minutes today to put together this pile of magnets. It honestly didn't take me very long and I've been itching to do it for a week now. I've been wanting to make more magnets out of some of the quotes we've used for signs. Cross that off my to-do list! Yay!! Now I have to remember to snap pictures of them tomorrow morning.

One night at church I was given a starter for Amish Friendship Bread. I've tried making it before but have lost interest after day 5 or so. She happened to be standing next to me so I handed it off to her and told her it was her "baby". She was pretty pleased to have a project to do all by herself. Today was baking day (only two days late, due to camping). I did help out with adding the ingredients to help keep the mess to a minimum. Her brother was quite green with envy and now wants to do his own loaf. We'll see, his attention span for this sort of thing isn't as long as hers. I'm quite impressed with how well she did with it.

I still want to know if it was the Amish's (is that how I would say it?) idea to add the instant vanilla pudding on baking day or if is was someone else's. If so....how in the heck to they know about instant vanilla pudding? (What can I say, I'm a skeptic!)

I'm considering it my workout for the day.

On Saturday morning Hubby announced he wanted us to go check out some land/houses that are for sale in our area. He first took us to a piece of land up a curvy dirt road. We had already talked about this chunk of land and I crossed it off my list without seeing it first. The reason...It was only accessible in the Spring via 4WD. Too sketchy for me. He kept driving right past it saying there was another road/sign he wanted to check out. We started heading out into the middle of nowhere.


Soon I see the sign that reads "Road not recommended for 2WD vehicles or trailers." Oh great. Immediately my whole body instantly tensed as I began my protest.


Hubby was wondering why I was having such a hairy canary. I told him, as I'm white-knuckling the arm handle, "I'm a Minnesota Girl and I'm not used to such sketchy roads. Most roads we travel on like this are paved and have guardrails." I'm actually quite surprised at myself how nervous I was. I didn't think I was like that. The road was gravel, wide enough for a car and a half, the weather was clear and no one else was on the road. Ideal conditions for a drive like this. I really had no reason to be nervous. I tried to relax and enjoy the scenery, not only for my sake but for the sake of the kids. They were starting to get nervous as I continued my hooting. I settled for not-so-silent gasps instead of all-out yelps.We were on our working way up to the top of this plateau. You can't really see the road in this picture very well but it criss crosses up. There is also a bike trail up to the top. There were lush meadows, pine tress and unbelievably gorgeous views!Our trusty "Extra Large Yukon" (as our kids call it) made it to the top in fine form.



We all got out and ran around for a bit. We could see the clouds starting to roll in and didn't want to be caught on top in ishy weather, so we didn't stick around for very long. We slowly made our way down,

passing a huge flock of sheep at the bottom.

I did have to admit that it wasn't so bad after all, it could actually be enjoyable and I would like to go up there again sometime. I'm going to have to toughen up if we're going to live down here. Drives like that are usually worth it, you can see so much more from way high up.

I counted it as my workout for the day...Toning since every single muscle was tense the entire way up and cardio because my heart kept racing then lurching then racing then lurching (interval training).