Blast from the past - Camping in 2006

I couldn't resist the urge to post a few pre-blog pics from way back in the summer of 2006, when we took our first camping trip to Lake Siskiyou. Car look familiar? I flat out refused to have the minivan talk back then. **Please note that Trevi is gnawing on Barbie's feet.
Clara was 5 1/2 and Trevor was two and change. It was on this trip that Trevor earned the nickname, "Wild Elf Beast" for his love of running around wildly and just generally being crazy and dirt-covered. Clara was having her last wild romp of a summer before heading to Kindergarten (I had forgotten how much I adored her short hair – she had just cut it herself ) –Oh, what the heck! Here's a picture of that:
A word to the wise: Don't leave your 5-year-old alone with green paint and scissors after watching Anne of Green Gables, unless you are fine with experimental coiffs. But I digress...

Camping three years ago:
I wonder if we can squeeze in another trip this summer......Pancakes taste better with a little grit.

Biomass

My non-horticulturalist self has always wondered why any sane individual would cut back beautiful trees to their bony knuckles. Growing up, there were some trees down the street from us that were hacked down to nubs every fall, and they sat there in the yard all winter, looking humiliated. I felt for them. I scoffed at their owners.
Well, I can scoff no more. The two mulberry trees in our backyard have, it seems, been knuckled for years (since long before we moved here), and now I am heartily nodding in agreement. Yikes. The growth rate and sheer biomass of these things is UNBELIEVABLE. One day you can run around unhindered in the yard, and the next, you find yourself crashing into inch-thick branches that appeared mysteriously overnight! Aliens?

The Hotel

I'm fairly sure I've sung the praises of both Tinkertoys and old school Fisher Price Little People in previous blogs. They're cool and oozing with creative potential, etc. etc.
Doubtless I've also gushed on and on about what utter geniuses/architects/inventors/thinkers my kids are (when they're using their powers for good).
The moment captured here shows the culmination of a full day of construction, destruction, reconstruction, and negotiation, infused with the odd teachable moment, and sprinkled with a bit of potty humor (the Little People do have a little toilet, after all).
Enlarge this bad boy, and check out the hotel room numbers, the furniture, and the harmonious faces on two children who would, under normal circumstances, be scowling at one another (at the very least).

Not visible in the above photo is the pulley-operated yellow elevator, so I'm including this alternate view from a bit earlier in the evening – about the time that Clara was tying a big pink ribbon around the top floors of the hotel. Why?Tomorrow's project: the Geodesic Dome.