Farm-Sitting - Day 1

Ok, so I know it's not actually a farm, but I'm calling it one, and it counts.

After waking up to let one of the dogs out 3 or 4 times last night when she whined to go the bathroom, and listening to the ducks periodically break out in a quacking chorus every couple of hours all night long, we were all wide awake and ready to get to work at 7am. I quickly realized that poor Hoover didn't actually have to go to the bathroom. She was just out of water and wanted to go get a drink in the fountain. Note to self: fill doggy water bowl before bed.

We needed to get to work early this morning to get everything done and get back home by 10am to decorate the tree with our scouting troop. I had stayed up late cutting and painting ornaments for the tree and prepping supplies, so I was all ready to go except for the farm chores.

Milking the goats took SO much longer than we thought it would. All the times we'd practiced, we'd only milked them for 3-5 minutes each and I guess the owners finished milking after we left, but we quickly found out that it was at least a 30-45 minute job per goat, twice a day. Oy. The girls split the tasks among themselves. A was in charge of letting the chickens and ducks out of the pen and feeding them, and C and K helped milk the goats. This first day they did pretty good, getting at least half done per goat before asking me for help. I fed the goats and helped finish up milking and then we all headed inside to feed the dogs. It was almost 9 by this point and we hadn't even gotten dressed yet or had breakfast. I ran in to take a quick shower once the dogs were fed, and we left the house around 9:15 for our 35 minute drive. Not quite enough time to swing by the house like I'd hoped, but definitely enough time to hit the McDonald's drive-thru on the way down.

We pulled in to the parking lot downtown at exactly 10am on the dot. Despite the fact that I was supposed to be the first one there, I was actually pretty proud of us for pulling it off as well as we did.

Decorating the tree was pretty fun, with all the girls taking turns making the ornaments and hanging them on the tree. It took about 1.5 hours to finish, but it was nice to take a little breather and just watch them work.

working on the ornaments

the decorating crew (minus my kids, of course)

the finished product - decorated with uniforms and handmade ornaments. Cute, right?

After the tree was all finished, we headed back to the house to prep the food for Thanksgiving. I was cooking this year, so I needed to make sure everything was set before I headed back up to the farm. I prepared the brine and bagged the turkey up in it, dug out all my recipes and checked supplies, measured and packed the ingredients for the things I'd be cooking ahead of time at the farm tonight, and packed a whole bunch of food for us to eat up there for the next few days. Thankfully, I only needed a couple of things at the grocery store because the place was a madhouse being that it was the day before Thanksgiving. After we shopped, we stopped for a relaxing lunch before heading back up to the farm. I knew we'd be getting back up there just in time to milk the goats again at 3:30, so I wanted to relax just a little bit first.

The goats were a little less cooperative this time, but we managed to get the job done. We've gotten a teeny-tiny bit of clean milk for us to use, and quite a bit of dirty milk that's only good for the dogs to eat (their meals are served to them like a bowl of cereal) or for making soap, which is what the goat owners do with the milk they collect from these goats. By the time we were done milking, it was just about time to lock the chickens and ducks in their pen for the night. We fed the dogs once more and then settled down to relax for the rest of the evening knowing we'd have one more crazy day tomorrow, and then hopefully some days to enjoy this place more before heading back home.

C milking Jan

K milking Robin

Milagro, the baby boy goat. He is Robin's baby, but is now separated in his own area since he kept drinking all her milk.

When we came back up here tonight, K accidentally dropped one of the grocery bags, and unfortunately it was the one that had my baking dishes in it and my casserole dish shattered. We hunted around here and found one that I can use in its place, thankfully. Tonight I plan to make the pumpkin pie and also bake and mash the sweet potatoes so they're ready to go right in the oven when I get home tomorrow. The more I get done here, the better.

Last night A and C slept on the fold-out couch with the dogs and tonight K wanted to. So, I made A and C pick a number from 1-20, and A won it, landing C on the big bed with me for the night. She wasn't terribly happy about it, but soon enough they were all sound asleep. I joined them shortly afterwards, pretty tired myself from the long day we'd had.

House-sitting on the Farm

To add to our list of completely random and crazy activities this year, we had the awesome opportunity to house-sit for some people that, although they lived right in the middle of the city, had a virtual farm in their backyard.

Here's how it happened:

• The goat-owners asked the person who had previously cared for their animals if he was free to help out over the Thanksgiving holiday while they traveled back east to visit family, but he said he couldn't help.
• They then told her sister that they wouldn't be able to go back east because they didn't have anyone to care for the animals.
• The sister, unbeknownst to them, sent an email to the local homeschooling group asking if someone would like to take care of the animals during Thanksgiving week.
• I initially hesitated since I wasn't sure if they would think we were qualified and also because I had never met these people before.
• When the sister sent out a second email saying they would train people to milk the goats, I went ahead and replied that we would be interested in coming up to help out since we're only 35 minutes away and could make trips easily. I hadn't told the girls about it yet because I knew they'd be really sad if it didn't work out.
• The sister emailed me back and said they wanted someone to stay overnight at the house because the dogs didn't do well if people weren't around, and asked me if I was still interested. At this point, I went ahead and told the girls and asked them if they'd like to do it. They all enthusiastically answered, "Yes!"
• I got back to the sister and told her we'd be willing to do it, but I'd seen another couple of emails come through, so when I didn't hear back from anyone for a few days, I figured it fell through. Actually, during this time, she was contacting her sister, the goat owners, and telling them she'd found someone to watch the animals behind their back because "they couldn't make her go visit mom and dad all alone".
• Eventually, I got an email from the actual goat owners asking us if we could make a trip to come up there and see what was required, do a meet and greet (since we still hadn't met any of them), and let them know for sure if we were interested. Unfortunately, this was right in the middle of Outrageous Outgrowns, but I knew the girls would be upset if we missed the opportunity, so I picked the least insane of the days and made the 2 1/2 hour trip up there and back to meet the family, meet the animals and see what we'd have to do. It was actually all pretty weird thinking about staying in this home belonging to people we didn't even know, but the girls were obviously very excited, and the goat owners actually seemed pretty happy with our enthusiasm and willingness to help out.
• We traveled up their two more times to actually learn how to milk the goats and practice that, and to find out where all the food and supplies were and what specifically we had to do. Each meeting got a little more comfortable, although I couldn't help but think how weird it was for them to entrust their home and animals to complete strangers for 5 days, although I was really thankful for the opportunity. I know they would have paid their house-sitter to watch the animals and I actually saw one person talk about being paid on the email list, but the way I see it, I usually pay for my kids to have this kind of experience, so doing it for free was kind of like a bonus for us.

So we headed up to the house on Tuesday afternoon prepared to spend the rest of the week there. We brought our sheets, blankets and pillows, and a single change of clothes (since we have to go back down to San Jose tomorrow anyway). I would have felt too awkward looking around the kitchen at pot and pans options and supplies during our previous visits, so we planned to eat out for dinner tonight and then bring more food up when we came back, after we figured out what they did and didn't have (like no microwave!)

While house-sitting, we would be responsible for 3 goats (2 of which needed to be milked twice a day), 4 dogs, 13 chickens, 4 ducks, and 2 fish. They also had a parrot which went to another house at the last minute, and 3 more goats that were there on our first visit, but went to be bred before we got there. I was actually really glad we only had 3 goats to take care of. Trying to milk 4 goats would have taken us all day!

All the animals had already been taken care of for the day, so after eating dinner we settled in for the night. I knew it would be an early morning for us, so we started it off by getting some sleep, even though the girls were really excited and took a little while to calm down. K and I slept on the big bed in one bedroom, and C and A slept on the pull-out sofa in the living room surrounded by dogs.

I hope this all works out!

Operation Christmas Child Shoebox Packing Party

If there's one thing I love more than anything else, it's probably doing service projects like this. Since my girls aren't always as enthusiastic as I am (especially around Christmastime, when there are a huge number of service options available for kids their age), it's especially fun when I can plan a service event with a big group of people so at least I'm not working alone.

Probably since this was right on the heels of several other service projects, my girls weren't all that excited to participate. Since we volunteer so often now, I don't make them help when we go. They help when they want, and hang-out when they don't, and either way is ok with me.

Packing shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child is something we've been doing as a family since the girls were babies. We'd buy 6 plastic tubs and each person would fill their own. Then we'd drive down to the local collection site and pray for each one before walking it inside and handing it off. Last year, for some reason, we missed packing shoeboxes entirely, so I was even more excited to do this packing party this year.

Our shoebox packing pictures from 2008

 

This one was organized for our American Heritage Girls troop, and I was glad to see the big turnout. I made a sign-up sheet and had it available at the last several meetings, asking families to bring 10-20 of a specific item (toothbrushes, combs, soap, pencils, etc), along with anything else they'd like to bring for the shoeboxes. I had quite a collection at my house of stuffed animals and small toys, as well as some clothing and shoes from the show's donated items, so that provided something fun for the kids to put in the boxes along with the practical items.

I wasn't sure how the evening was going to go, but I knew that I really wanted to get across to the girls what they were doing and why it was so important, so I showed them this video:

A Boy's Life Changed

We talked about how each box represented a child, a life, that they could make a lasting impression on forever. Not just the items in the box, but the knowledge that someone loved them, cared about them, and they were special.

After some last minute instructions, we took some time to pray for the kids we were packing for, and then I gave them some quiet time to think about who they were packing for and what they should put in the box for them.

And then, the packing began. Not in a frenzy as I had expected, but deliberately and thoughtfully. They slowly sifted through the items on the tables, looking for just the right things to put in their boxes.

A few of them gathered items from the table and then took them off to a corner to pack them in their box. A couple had to get very creative to fit all of the goodies in.

Most girls spent the entire time packing one special box, but a few went back to pack a second one. When they were done packing their boxes, we had given them instructions to head to the back table to pick up a letter, photo, and envelope to place inside. We had the letter Samaritan's Purse provides online, with places to fill in your favorite color, food, and why you love Jesus in the blanks. Many girls took the time to write little notes to the children before placing the letter inside. I had also made an abbreviated letter for the littler ones who weren't strong readers, or the kids who wanted simpler fill-ins. The photo was one I had taken at the last meeting of all of the girls together. I was hoping they'd take the time to circle themselves so the child who receives the shoebox can see the face of the child who packed it for them. The envelope was one that was addressed here to my house. I'm hoping we may hear back from a couple of the kids, so our girls can hear directly from the children who received the boxes.

After they put the papers inside, it was time to head up front and pray for their box. Our troop Shepherd volunteered to stay there and pray with the girls if they wanted, but many chose to pray over their boxes alone. It was such a sweet time to see them really think about that child and pray that they would know the love of Christ.

No one was counting or watching the boxes pile up. Everyone was thinking only about the box they were packing, which was such a wonderful thing. We were all surprised when we stacked them up at the end of the night and found that we had packed 52 boxes.

I'm so proud of these girls, and I hope we'll all continue thinking about and praying for the children who will be receiving these boxes soon.

(Actual Date: November 19)

A Day At The Circus

It's no secret that I love entertainment: movies, TV, stand-up comedy, concerts, theater, and of course, the circus, among others. Every couple of years I splurge and buy some tickets to the circus. Even though the theme is different, the acts don't change much, so skipping years in between shows keeps it fresh and interesting. And as young as the girls are, doing something we did 2 or 3 years ago is just like doing it for the first time, so they had no idea what to expect.

The tickets were pretty cheap, so we went ahead and parked in the expensive lot and walked all the way to the other end of the lot where the animal meet-and-greet was happening. We were there a good 20 minutes before the animal pre-show was supposed to close, so we got in line to see it. Unfortunately, the not-so-nice lady at the front of the line refused to honor our printed online voucher and told us we'd have to go to the ticket booth and redeem them for tickets before she'd let us in. Here is a picture for reference.

The blue circle is where I parked. The orange spiral is where the animal pre-show was. And the purple 'X' is where the box office is located. Grr..

I warned the girls that we might not make it to the box office and back before they closed the pre-show, but they wanted to try for it anyway. So we practically speed-walked the whole way there and back and entered the pre-show with just a few minutes left to look around.

Needless to say, my girls were thrilled to see the animals up close - and some of them were really close.

 a pretty cool amber-colored tiger

 the tigers were about 6 feet from us

This horse looked exactly like the Bengal tigers for a minute, but it was spotted. It was one of the most unusual-looking horses I've ever seen.

After we had looked around outside for a few minutes, we headed inside for the indoor pre-show. They let everyone come down onto the floor and meet all the clowns and performers. You can also watch some small acts in performance rings, learn to juggle, or try on your very own clown nose. A decided it was a good time to collect autographs in the program we bought just before we came inside. It was a little like "Where's Waldo" as we looked through the book and tried to find the matching clowns in the crowds of people. We got SO close to getting all of the clowns' autographs. I think we were only missing one or two by the time the show was about to start.

the first clown she found

Towards the end of our autograph-gathering, we found a girl clown with blue hair. We tried to ask her for her autograph but she walked away in a big rush mumbling something we couldn't understand. It seemed a little rude at first, but less than two minutes later we spotted her again.... hanging from the ceiling. Totally forgiven. We did track her down as soon as she was done, though, and got her autograph.

We made our way up to our seats once the pre-show had finished. We were way, way up on the upper deck, but we could see everything just fine. Or maybe I'm just so used to seeing shows and sporting events from that height that I don't know any better. At any rate, we all enjoyed the show tremendously. It had a transportation theme, which they exploited heavily.

"Traffic cone" man on stilts

leaping horses

leaping tigers

poodles in buckets

 women being shot out of cannons

standing elephants

and the tallest stilts I've ever seen, by far... I mean seriously, take another look at this guy compared to the people around him

He had to duck to get out the door!

Don't tell anyone, but I brought you some snippets of the show so you can see some of the acts.

This guy had serious guts. There were a ton of tigers in there with him.

This tiger sat on the sidelines during the entire show and didn't do any of the tricks. We wondered about her until we found out that apparently she speaks Spanish, and only likes to dance...

These guys were having way too much fun at their construction site

I'm not sure why I quit taking pictures halfway through the show. I swear I nearly had a heart attack near the end when the guys ran and jumped on the spinning circles. I thought for sure they were going to fall and die. But I did make sure to get a photo of one of my very favorite things there - the ringleader's outfit! I swear I would buy this for Jessey in a heartbeat if I knew where to get one. I loved the whole ensemble, but the jacket was just awesome.

Actual Date: August 21

The Adventure that is Outrageous Outgrowns

On Memorial Day weekend in 2005, we sat inside Parkside Hall near the Convention Center wondering what was going to happen next. Would there be a hundred people lined up outside, wrapping around the city block, of anxious customers who couldn't wait to get inside? Would there be absolutely no one? 

I had purchased an existing business on a whim for $7000. I had a vision of a huge event someday, one that would fill the convention center and be bursting at the seams with customers. And so, I decided to call it "The Bay Area's BIGGEST Resale Event For Kids". Was it the biggest resale event? I had no idea. I really didn't know much at all about the resale world other than the fact that I had shopped at this event when my son was a toddler (who was a 10-year old in 2005), and then sold and shopped at the event again for the girls in recent years. I also knew that I had managed to "grow" the event from 19 sellers the previous fall to 50 at this event. I'd also managed to find a location, which apparently had proved to be the death of many consignment sales before. And I also managed to join forces with the most dynamic, hard-working team in existence - my family. In the beginning the entire show was a family effort. Every single task from preparation to setup, to cash register and packing was done by me, Mike, my mom or dad, my sister, my aunts, my in-laws, and even my grandma. It was actually pretty fun spending all that time together, although I'm not sure they all found it quite as endearing as I did. They've all stuck with me, though, and in some way each of them has continued to help make the show the success it is today. And somewhere in there I managed to convince my mom to become my business partner, and working with her has been the most amazing experience by far. She fills in every space where I'm lacking, and together we make such a great team. Along the way, I've learned so much from her and I'm extremely thankful for the excuse the show has given me to spend so much time with her.

In those days, despite the dreams, I had no idea how big this thing would become. Back then our supply list of items to bring to the show included "something to do" for the down-times between customers. Today, I'm lucky if I remember to snap a picture or make note of the final layout before the whole thing is finished and packed up. In a sense, it's kind of like planning your wedding over and over again. You make all the plans for every aspect of every moment, agonize over tiny details, get everything set and then adjust them again, pour tons of money into making it the best ever, and then you blink and it's over. And you're left with this faint memory that something cool happened and you liked it, even though you can't really remember all that much about it.

For many years we did everything we could think of to get the word out. Everything, that is, except to spend actual real money. We handed out flyers at parks, put flyers on windshields, drove signs into the ground and attached them to street poles. We sought out online calendars, called day-cares and schools, and even put out press kits, trying to entice the media to cover our event. And through it all, the show started growing, and just kept growing and growing and growing. Pretty soon we had 100, and then 200, and then 300 sellers at our event. The workload became unbearable and we hired staff to help us carry the load, literally and figuratively. We hired friends, family, sellers and their husbands, and even a few guys who were down on their luck. And suddenly giving money away became almost as much of a joy as seeing the business grow and hearing how much people appreciated coming to shop there.

But then something happened. It seemed like it happened suddenly, though I suppose it was actually happening all along and I just didn't notice. The show had grown too big. Granted, the show had been growing all along. In the beginning we used 1/2 of one side of the Hall. Later we used the full 1/2, only to become disillusioned with the Convention Center staff, which would land us ultimately at the Fairgrounds. We started in a small building, moved to a bigger one, and slowly began occupying more and more of the space inside it. But now the show had become a stressful challenge just to fit all of the items in the building, and the line to pay on the first days was spiraling out of control, hitting nearly 2-hours at its peak. I honestly couldn't think of any way to fix these problems. We'd gone vertical, we'd sped up our checkout process, we'd used every inch of space we could, but our previous growth in sales had completely halted and was now slowly starting to slip downward.

And then my mom, in all her brilliance, suggested moving to a bigger building - the biggest building they have at the Fairgrounds. And Mike suggested using barcode scanners at the registers, to scan tags live instead of removing them. And although it felt like a huge weight had been lifted, these propositions were extremely scary to me. Moving to a bigger building was going to cost considerably more money, and we were already slipping financially. Scanning barcodes at the registers meant that an infinite amount of things could potentially go wrong (including the thought that we may find ourselves at the end of the show with no record of what sold and no way to pay any of our sellers - terrifying!). But after some serious deliberation, I decided that there was no way I could go on providing bad service to the customers at an event with my name on it. So either we made the changes, or we quit.

This most recent show that ended a week ago was our second in this new giant building and we're still trying to figure out how best to use the space. The financial numbers are very slowly on the rise again, though, which made me confident enough to sign contracts for two more events next year. And the barcode system is amazing and not only cut the line time by more than half, but saves me weeks of work after the event. Of course, there's always kinks to work out and adjustments to be made (like the truck days - I'm working on it, Dad!), but that's the best part of this business and why I've loved it so much all along. It's like a never-ending round of process improvement and streamlining - a business that I get to tweak and adjust and change whenever and wherever I think it's needed. It's been the ultimate learning experience for me, and it's been a ridiculous amount of fun.

So what have my kids learned from Outrageous Outgrowns?

- customer service, as they see me deal with unruly or unhappy customers

- marketing, as they watch us find new ways to get the word out

- event coordination, as they sit in meetings and hear us talk about logistics, and demand and bargain for services with our event hosts

- integrity, as they see me run the business with honesty and do the best I can even when no one's looking

- budgeting, as they plan how many hours they want to work in order to buy the things they want

- hard work, in learning that I'm not paying them for hours when they're not really working hard

- thinking on your feet, which needs to happen way more often than I'd like it to, during the event

- diligence, when they see me keep pushing even though they know I'm tired

- business planning, when they go with me to check out the competition in the area and are able to tell me what I do better or what I should try to fix

- entrepreneurship, as they've grown up watching me make tough decisions and face my fears

- faith, when I say that the show is God's gift to us and I want to honor Him with all I do there

- family devotion, when they see everyone willing to help out for no other reason than the fact that they want me to succeed

- etiquette, when they learn how to speak and act around customers in a business place

- kindness/gentleness/patience, as we try to control our tempers and emotions after 9 days without much sleep

- generosity, as they see us give and give, and then give some more, for no reason at all

I'm not sure how much longer we'll keep running these events. We just finished our 9th year - 18 Outrageous Outgrowns shows, including several shows that almost didn't happen, and at least a couple of years where I'd been ready to call it quits. But thousands of people come through those doors each time we open them, and I hope we've made their lives a little happier, a little less stressful, a little more peaceful. I hope we've encouraged people, given them something to look forward to in dark times, and brightened their day with that one good deal or the check in their mailbox. If I was ever sad about selling or ending the business, it would be those opportunities that I would miss the most. I feel so fortunate to have been able to experience all of this. It has changed the way I think about everything.

Labor Day Camping!

Hot on the heels of K's 8th birthday was our annual family camping trip over Labor Day weekend. I didn't realize how long we'd been making this trek into the mountains for the weekend until my cousin reminded me that we left the campground one year and came straight to the hospital to see her and her newborn baby - the girl who just turned 7 years old! - and that wasn't even anywhere near our first year camping together. I had no idea we'd been doing this for that long.

The camp-out also used to include my sister and her family, who have been sorely missed out here since they moved to Phoenix about 100 years ago :( Seriously, though, we miss them a lot and can't wait until we see them again. Hopefully we'll get the chance to camp-out and play in the dirt together sometime soon.

Usually our Labor Day weekends are filled with day hikes, trips to the beach, swimming in the creek, and late nights playing games, but this year we were all completely exhausted from the crazy weeks we'd had leading up to the trip, and all agreed we would be just fine sitting around in our chairs for most of the day and night. And honestly, that's practically all we did.

Our tent site was pretty huge and had plenty of room to spread out. Unfortunately, it also had plenty of poison oak. In fact, the entire outside perimeter of our site was poison oak plants, so we had to set our tent up more towards the center, and be sure avoid touching nearly anything in our area. It's pretty amazing, actually, that we all made it out of there poison oak-free.

Grammy shares some of her cantaloupe with the kids (and the grown-ups)

C takes a liking to one of Papa's extremely sharp sticks

K finds that a ridiculously long pointy stick doubles quite well as a toothpick when eating cantaloupe. The only difficulty is figuring out how to get the cantaloupe to reach your mouth after you've stabbed it

So, we ate and snacked, and sat and talked, and walked around the campsites a bit. Michael and my mom took the only thing that might qualify as a real hike while I was reading to the girls one night, and the rest of the time we seemed pretty content to limit hiking to bathroom and shower trips.

At one point, we did do a scavenger hunt, with a list of items my mom had written up ahead of time. K was paired with Michael, C went with my dad, and A went with me. We hunted for a really long time looking for rocks in the shape of goldfish, a round and smooth stone, and the truly-elusive yellow or red flower, that no one found. Some of the items proved to be easier, like the piece of bark, inorganic item, and a piece of string. A and I prided ourselves on the fact that we brought a "dead bug" to the table that was already dead, while the two other barbarian teams sacrificed insects for their collection. We actually did win the contest, too, partially because of our creative "container you can carry water in". The other two teams brought back water bottles, but we brought back the cap to an acorn. Granted, you can't carry much water in it, but you can carry water!

And while the girls were mostly ok with playing around the campsite and reading books around the campfire, there were a couple of times where they were looking around for something new and interesting to do. K actually made friends with the people from the campsite across the street, both the kids and adults, and spent much of her daytime hours over there. We'd also brought the girls' bikes, so we gave them the campsite map and set them free to explore on their own during the day. One afternoon, my dad even used some rope from his truck and one of the pieces of firewood to make a rope swing...

They all took turns using the swing. It actually got quite a lot of use!

And of course, Papa had to try out the rope swing, too

One evening we amused ourselves by watching yellow jackets cut hunks off of the steak we were having for dinner and then attempt to fly away with it. Some of them were able to cut through pretty quickly, while others seemed to work at it forever. Several of them cut off pieces so big that they struggled to get altitude and dipped and swayed drunkenly as they tried to fly away. We wondered how many of them actually made it back to the nest with their load, or if they had to drop it along the way. There was definitely some sort of hierarchy, as well, with the yellower of the yellow jackets bumping the darker ones out of the way. The yellower ones were also much better at cutting the pieces of meat off quickly.

And while it was really fascinating to watch them work, we regretted it greatly the next day when they and one hundred of their closest friends came back to check out the new buffet restaurant in town. Next time maybe we'll watch them somewhere other than on our eating table. Oops.

Of course there were lots of lizards to be found and captured at the campsite. I think a frog may have been in the mix there, too. And what camp-out in the mountains would be complete without a couple of banana slugs on the breakfast table? Thankfully the lizards all survived the weekend and we left them behind on Monday.

Evenings were filled with huge campfires and lots and lots of smore's. We had all brought quite a bit of wood up there and none of us were interested in bringing any of it back home. So, for much of the time we had a fire that was so big and so hot we couldn't stand to be too terribly close to it. We joked that the whole ring would be full to the top of ash by the time we were done, and ironically, that's just how it was when we arrived. The ring was completely full and my dad ended up using the Weber lid and some garbage bags to clear it all out so we could even have a fire in there in the first place.

The ashes and coals made for some cool smoke-writing with the long, pointy sticks I talked about earlier, and then my dad had the great idea to use the end of his fire-poker stick as a pencil on the outside of the fire ring.

He wrote "Kelly", A wrote her name, and then he wrote the "&" and "are dorks" underneath. Fair enough.

But then he wrote "Katie is a girl", and for some reason C protested loudly and tried to erase my name with her shoe. So he changed it to "C is a girl" and then added the word "booger" at the end, for emphasis. And finally, just so she wouldn't feel left out, he gave K her own Native American name "Rocks in head"

On Monday, we decided to head out to Roaring Camp to see what was happening there. We usually don't really have any burning desire on Labor Day to do anything in particular, but none of us really want the relaxing weekend to end, so we kind of just drag it on as long as physically possible.

We headed to Scotts Valley for some Round Table Pizza, and then into the public Henry Cowell side of the park to check it out. We're all still feeling pretty lazy and decide to skip any kind of long hike through the forest or around the creek. We opt, instead, for a visit to the park's Information Center, where C takes dozens of pictures of the display animals and we all wait outside and relax. The redwood forest is one of my favorite places to be, and definitely one of my favorite places to camp. We take half of the strolling Redwood Grove Trail before I realize that I left my camera sitting in the gift shop and double-back to find it. By the time I get back with it, the group's given up the trail as well.

We decide to head over to the Roaring Camp side, where the big steam engine takes riders further into the woods, or to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. It's the 50th anniversary of the train this year, which I think is a much bigger deal than the tiny signs they've got posted at the train station show it to be. We listen to the tail-end of the music entertainment from the bbq lunch they've had, while the lone singer dedicates songs to the clean-up crew and staff. Only a few people wander around here at this time of day, but we still manage to lose the girls anyway. After a while, we find them in the gift shop petting the shop-owner's two black cats, one of which seriously looks like he was bred with a wild jungle cat of some sort. He's huge with ridiculously long legs and has a leopard face, but acts just like a domestic cat. I've never seen anything quite like it before.

We hear the familiar whistle of the approaching train, bringing travelers back to their starting point. We run to put pennies on the track for the train to squish.

One bounces off and disappears. We search for it for several minutes, but never find it. This one, however, was squished quite nicely and makes for a cool souvenir.

such a beautiful train

Still not ready to let the weekend end, we decide to let the girls have a little fun at the now deserted activities they've offered for the holiday. All three pan for gold, though only A truly sticks with it. She's convinced she'll be rich if she just keeps trying. We're actually surprised that we find quite a bit of flakes in the sludge, even though we've only paid $1 to pan on our own and not the $3 they charge for a 'stocked' pan with guaranteed gold in it. 

They let us just keep panning and panning indefinitely since no one's around, so we find a few more flakes while K goes over and makes a candle. And now that the place is actually shutting down for the day, we have no other option than to give up the weekend and head for home. 

But we even managed to make a mockery of that, as we actually drive the wrong way over the hill to Santa Cruz to eat dinner at Denny's, before heading back over the mountains to go home.

Actual Dates: August 30 - September 2