Yesterday I got a thread clogged up in the bobbin case of my sewing machine so I had to take it all out, then I thought, hmm, I should unscrew this part and clean under it and oil, oh... and that part under there too...
I took out 6 screws and a bunch of odd looking metal parts and it was a jigsaw puzzle from hell trying to get them to fit again! What was I thinking? I had a 3 piece puzzle and I totally could not do it. I spent a couple of hours looming over the machine trying to get it back together, but it wouldn't fit right and it wouldn't work. How on earth did this fit earlier?
My husband came to see what I was up to, and he said "Do you need to concentrate or do you need to take a break and come back to it later?" Yes, the latter. I stepped away for the rest of the day.
Last night I thought I'd look at it one more time before going to bed and of course figured it out and fit it all back together in no time. Yay. Why couldn't I do that earlier? I had visions of it never working again. Funny, I was starting off with the first piece upside down and then the other pieces wouldn't fit. In any case, I got things put together properly and decided a screwdriver is a dangerous tool in my hands!
Since it was working, I just had to run something through it. Then another seam, just a little more.
I finished two summer dresses, changed the thread in both machines and almost completed two more sun-dresses!
Just after 1am I looked at the clock. Shock! How did that happen? I never stay up that late; I have trouble staying awake after 11:00. Seeing the time made me lose my groove, and I shut it all off. Great, can't sleep because I was laying there worrying about oversleeping since I stayed up too late.
No worries, I woke up just fine thanks to a three-year-old alarm clock. And I made great progress on my dress collection which makes me very happy. I want to set up shop and sell the dresses online to support my sewing habit (and pay a professional to take my machines apart and put them back together properly). I think I will launch the shop in August or September, just in time for Halloween.
In the meantime, I am enjoying my sewing time even if it means a sacrifice of sleep time. Although, I will be paying for it this afternoon when the wall of fatigue smacks me down.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Saturday, June 16, 2012
It's Mid-June? How did that happen?
Slow down, Calendar! Where are you going so fast? June 15th already, sheesh. Well, must be time for a mish-mash blog post about little things just to catch up. Every paragraph is totally unrelated to any of the others, thus making this a multi-post blog post! I'm catching up! You'd better sit down for this one with a full cup of coffee, you're going to be here a while.
School is over for the year. Keith finished his middle-school year at the end of May and I was completely caught off-guard. I thought it was over at the end of June. I forgot that they adjusted the school calendar. So nice to have him home! I love it! I'm pretty sure he does too. He's still teaching evening classes at APU. Fenna was done on June 1st. Her last week of school was kind of strange; it was all half-days and she didn't have to go for every class so some days she only had one hour or nothing at all. But, her high school exchange year came to an end albeit a fizzled out finish. I think she had a good year and I'm proud of her for all of the hurdles she encountered and all of the good things she squeezed into her one school year. I think she enjoyed it and learned more than she thinks; the classes were fairly typical American and the school structure was very typical. She had a lot of friends in school and I'm sure she will miss them all very much. Gracie's school ended June 7th. On the 6th she got to have lunch with her future 1st grade teacher and some of the kids from that class. She's excited and she already made a new friend who has the same birthday. Her teacher is tall and as Gracie said, "She looks like she is 23 years old." Hmm, well, I have no idea actually. Age is so important when you are six. On the 7th, the kindergarten class had a picnic at the park. The kids all played together for 3 hours! They had a blast! It was nice too. So, that's it, no more school.
Libby is reading. School is out and she decided to have a burst of brain growth. She can read small words and we practice the same ones over and over so that she'll have them memorized with ease. I'm going to go ahead and keep working with her on reading small words since she seems to love it so much.
Both girls have a reading poster in their rooms now. It is just a sheet of poster board and we are putting nametag stickers on the poster for each book they read. Gracie has to read a book and Libby has to listen to one. When they get a million stickers (this rule will likely change as we approach vacation time and they need a new toy for the roadtrip), they will each get a Merida doll. It's a very good incentive! Right now, I'm telling them 50 stickers, which is doable in 10 weeks of summer. Plus, they want those dolls!
We went camping. It was awful but we made the best of it. We planned a two night tent camping adventure and it deserves it's own blog post. You can read all about our interesting camping adventure HERE.
Fenna is packing. Ugh. I don't like the idea of letting her go. She's having a hard time trying to squeeze it all back into one suitcase and one carry-on. I told her to take another suitcase home or ship some boxes, but she wants to minimize how much stuff she takes home and not have the added expense of extra things. She said she'll get rid of some of her clothes and things and I asked her if she would like to donate some of it. Also, if she has some clothes that she will be saying goodbye to, I'd like to make dresses out of them for Gracie and Libby so that they'll have their own "Fenna Dresses" and they can get Fenna hugs when they feel sad for her. She loved that idea. We've been running errands and trying to tie up loose ends. We went to La Jolla for her final doctor appointment. Got her gym membership cancelled. We have to send in for reimbursement from her insurance company for the meds we paid for, and we have to settle up her Fed-Ex bills for the tariffs on the boxes she received, just business. We have a little list of places to go, favorite foods to eat and things to shop for. And we have a lot of things done that needed to be done. She took her piggy bank to the bank and cashed in her coins. She didn't think she had much, but it counted out to over $37. Pretty good! I'm glad YFU let her know when she leaves and got her e-ticket to her in a timely manner. When she arrived, they gave us barely any notice of her arrival date and time (luckily, we talked to Fenna and didn't wait for YFU to notify us!). We'll get things done soon and next thing you know it will be time to decide what to do with her empty bedroom. Ho hum.
My camera has dust or sand in it again. I want to throw it in the ocean, or run over it with the van. That wouldn't get me anywhere would it? Sigh. It just isn't as nice as the Canon powershot cameras that I had, the pictures are not as clean and clear and it has trouble focusing. Plus, it gets crap inside the lens all too often. I'm noticing people aren't using cameras anymore unless they are using a big elephant professional camera. People are using smart phones as cameras now. I'm not going to get a smart phone, they are just too expensive for what I would use it for. But, I would love to get back to using a Canon Powershot.
Charlie has a new game. He loves to take his diaper off and run around half naked. He can shed his jeans and diaper before you can blink. Streaking in the back yard is his favorite.
Speaking of the back yard, the neighbors just spread fertilizer and now we can't open our windows. The kids can't play outside and we have to hold our breath between the van and the door to the house. Isn't there a law against stinking up the whole neighborhood? Why don't Californians put straw down over the manure? Ugh. It just stinks!
Another back yard item to note: Keith cut down another tree. It was huge. Luckily, he got it down before the neighborhood started to smell like crap. This tree was ripping up the fenceline and the neighbors were more than happy to see it come down. He's taken 11 trees out of our yard since we moved in. We still have plenty left too. Who planted that many trees anyway? Wow.
We went to Scout's graduation party. I'm probably not supposed to mention this online, because the invite list was secret but now you know. Don't tell anyone. Her parents are both teachers at the same school where my husband works, and there is so much drama among the teachers and staff there so the invite list was to remain hushed to avoid hurt feelings. I'm glad they invited us, the family is such a wonderful family I can't get over it. Amazing teachers who have amazing kids! They are sending Scout to college in Switzerland. I googled the college; it looks amazing! Of course. It's an accredited American college in the middle of Europe. Perfect! I wish I would have had clear cut goals and objectives when I graduated from high school. Of course, my life would have been completely different and I probably would have skipped that whole living-in-a-trailer-house-while-collecting-food-stamps stage, so it's probably best that my life went the way it did. I am blessed and I'm happy for Scout and her family for her opportunity to start her adult life with this great adventure.
We took Henry to the graduation party. He loved it and made a new friend. George was especially happy to see Henry since he married Henry's parents. Hard to believe it has been three years ago that Katie and Andrew were married.
Lexie quit her job at Shakey's. Yes, again. But this time I think she's really done and never going back. She was so stressed out this last month and her schedule was crazy. I was on her case too, mostly because Charlie was spending the night too often and when he spends the night, she goes home and sleeps in while I have early morning babysitting duty. So, I told her that if he spends the night she has to spend the night too. Between that and the stress of the craziness at work, she decided to just leave Shakey's. She'd been through enough. She seems happier now and she's enjoying her time with Charlie. She's going to run out of money though. But, she is launching a new photography business and I know she will do well! Starting a profitable business is always a slow process, but she is off to a great start already! And she has a natural talent for the art of photography.
The other day we had spaghetti for dinner and we all ate too much. So, we went for a short walk. Keith, Fenna and I took Libby and the dog. Libby rode her big wheel. It was so nice, we walked an extra block or two and then decided to take a hilly walking trail behind the elementary school. I've never taken it before since I am usually pushing a stroller, so we went exploring. Up on top of the hill was a big rock that stood alone. Keith told Fenna to climb up on top and she wasn't sure she could climb it. I thought I could do it, so I kicked off my flip flops and climbed up. I'm like a squirrel! Getting down was another problem. We made it though. It was hilarious! Keith took some pictures which turned out to look a bit deceiving. It's hard to tell that the rock was hard to scale. A walk around the block turned into a fun little adventure.
A friend of mine is pregnant with twins. I am sewing receiving blankets for her and she asked me for burp cloths. I made 20 burp cloths out of plain white handtowels. I bought a package of 12 white bar towels at Sams Club years ago thinking they would make great bibs, but I never did use them. So, I cut a few of them into fours and serged up the cut edges. They look like washcloths now, but they'll be really handy I'm sure. I have time to put some cute appliques or trim on them. I want to sew princess dresses and kick off a little boutique, but it isn't happening with all the other sewing I seem to have. I'm storing up a lot of ideas though!
Father's Day is coming up soon. The girls and I picked out a gift for Keith and it's been hiding in the van for a while now. Libby picked out a card a couple of weeks ago to mail to her new Grandpa and it's still just sitting here. Now it will be late. Darn. The Mother's Day cards are still sitting here too. I won't be winning any awards for being a good post-office patron, but the sentiment is there. The cards are here. Maybe I'll make it my New Year's Resolution to be better about honoring Mother's and Father's Days next year. Yeah... next year. :)
I don't know why June feels like it went so fast already. Probably because it did. I just don't think we did much though. The days have just been going along rather quickly without any outings to speak of (except for the doctor appointment and the camping trip).
Your cup of coffee should be gone by now, this was a long catch-up blog post!
School is over for the year. Keith finished his middle-school year at the end of May and I was completely caught off-guard. I thought it was over at the end of June. I forgot that they adjusted the school calendar. So nice to have him home! I love it! I'm pretty sure he does too. He's still teaching evening classes at APU. Fenna was done on June 1st. Her last week of school was kind of strange; it was all half-days and she didn't have to go for every class so some days she only had one hour or nothing at all. But, her high school exchange year came to an end albeit a fizzled out finish. I think she had a good year and I'm proud of her for all of the hurdles she encountered and all of the good things she squeezed into her one school year. I think she enjoyed it and learned more than she thinks; the classes were fairly typical American and the school structure was very typical. She had a lot of friends in school and I'm sure she will miss them all very much. Gracie's school ended June 7th. On the 6th she got to have lunch with her future 1st grade teacher and some of the kids from that class. She's excited and she already made a new friend who has the same birthday. Her teacher is tall and as Gracie said, "She looks like she is 23 years old." Hmm, well, I have no idea actually. Age is so important when you are six. On the 7th, the kindergarten class had a picnic at the park. The kids all played together for 3 hours! They had a blast! It was nice too. So, that's it, no more school.
Libby is reading. School is out and she decided to have a burst of brain growth. She can read small words and we practice the same ones over and over so that she'll have them memorized with ease. I'm going to go ahead and keep working with her on reading small words since she seems to love it so much.
Both girls have a reading poster in their rooms now. It is just a sheet of poster board and we are putting nametag stickers on the poster for each book they read. Gracie has to read a book and Libby has to listen to one. When they get a million stickers (this rule will likely change as we approach vacation time and they need a new toy for the roadtrip), they will each get a Merida doll. It's a very good incentive! Right now, I'm telling them 50 stickers, which is doable in 10 weeks of summer. Plus, they want those dolls!
We went camping. It was awful but we made the best of it. We planned a two night tent camping adventure and it deserves it's own blog post. You can read all about our interesting camping adventure HERE.
Fenna is packing. Ugh. I don't like the idea of letting her go. She's having a hard time trying to squeeze it all back into one suitcase and one carry-on. I told her to take another suitcase home or ship some boxes, but she wants to minimize how much stuff she takes home and not have the added expense of extra things. She said she'll get rid of some of her clothes and things and I asked her if she would like to donate some of it. Also, if she has some clothes that she will be saying goodbye to, I'd like to make dresses out of them for Gracie and Libby so that they'll have their own "Fenna Dresses" and they can get Fenna hugs when they feel sad for her. She loved that idea. We've been running errands and trying to tie up loose ends. We went to La Jolla for her final doctor appointment. Got her gym membership cancelled. We have to send in for reimbursement from her insurance company for the meds we paid for, and we have to settle up her Fed-Ex bills for the tariffs on the boxes she received, just business. We have a little list of places to go, favorite foods to eat and things to shop for. And we have a lot of things done that needed to be done. She took her piggy bank to the bank and cashed in her coins. She didn't think she had much, but it counted out to over $37. Pretty good! I'm glad YFU let her know when she leaves and got her e-ticket to her in a timely manner. When she arrived, they gave us barely any notice of her arrival date and time (luckily, we talked to Fenna and didn't wait for YFU to notify us!). We'll get things done soon and next thing you know it will be time to decide what to do with her empty bedroom. Ho hum.
My camera has dust or sand in it again. I want to throw it in the ocean, or run over it with the van. That wouldn't get me anywhere would it? Sigh. It just isn't as nice as the Canon powershot cameras that I had, the pictures are not as clean and clear and it has trouble focusing. Plus, it gets crap inside the lens all too often. I'm noticing people aren't using cameras anymore unless they are using a big elephant professional camera. People are using smart phones as cameras now. I'm not going to get a smart phone, they are just too expensive for what I would use it for. But, I would love to get back to using a Canon Powershot.
Charlie has a new game. He loves to take his diaper off and run around half naked. He can shed his jeans and diaper before you can blink. Streaking in the back yard is his favorite.
Speaking of the back yard, the neighbors just spread fertilizer and now we can't open our windows. The kids can't play outside and we have to hold our breath between the van and the door to the house. Isn't there a law against stinking up the whole neighborhood? Why don't Californians put straw down over the manure? Ugh. It just stinks!
Another back yard item to note: Keith cut down another tree. It was huge. Luckily, he got it down before the neighborhood started to smell like crap. This tree was ripping up the fenceline and the neighbors were more than happy to see it come down. He's taken 11 trees out of our yard since we moved in. We still have plenty left too. Who planted that many trees anyway? Wow.
We went to Scout's graduation party. I'm probably not supposed to mention this online, because the invite list was secret but now you know. Don't tell anyone. Her parents are both teachers at the same school where my husband works, and there is so much drama among the teachers and staff there so the invite list was to remain hushed to avoid hurt feelings. I'm glad they invited us, the family is such a wonderful family I can't get over it. Amazing teachers who have amazing kids! They are sending Scout to college in Switzerland. I googled the college; it looks amazing! Of course. It's an accredited American college in the middle of Europe. Perfect! I wish I would have had clear cut goals and objectives when I graduated from high school. Of course, my life would have been completely different and I probably would have skipped that whole living-in-a-trailer-house-while-collecting-food-stamps stage, so it's probably best that my life went the way it did. I am blessed and I'm happy for Scout and her family for her opportunity to start her adult life with this great adventure.
We took Henry to the graduation party. He loved it and made a new friend. George was especially happy to see Henry since he married Henry's parents. Hard to believe it has been three years ago that Katie and Andrew were married.
Lexie quit her job at Shakey's. Yes, again. But this time I think she's really done and never going back. She was so stressed out this last month and her schedule was crazy. I was on her case too, mostly because Charlie was spending the night too often and when he spends the night, she goes home and sleeps in while I have early morning babysitting duty. So, I told her that if he spends the night she has to spend the night too. Between that and the stress of the craziness at work, she decided to just leave Shakey's. She'd been through enough. She seems happier now and she's enjoying her time with Charlie. She's going to run out of money though. But, she is launching a new photography business and I know she will do well! Starting a profitable business is always a slow process, but she is off to a great start already! And she has a natural talent for the art of photography.
The other day we had spaghetti for dinner and we all ate too much. So, we went for a short walk. Keith, Fenna and I took Libby and the dog. Libby rode her big wheel. It was so nice, we walked an extra block or two and then decided to take a hilly walking trail behind the elementary school. I've never taken it before since I am usually pushing a stroller, so we went exploring. Up on top of the hill was a big rock that stood alone. Keith told Fenna to climb up on top and she wasn't sure she could climb it. I thought I could do it, so I kicked off my flip flops and climbed up. I'm like a squirrel! Getting down was another problem. We made it though. It was hilarious! Keith took some pictures which turned out to look a bit deceiving. It's hard to tell that the rock was hard to scale. A walk around the block turned into a fun little adventure.
A friend of mine is pregnant with twins. I am sewing receiving blankets for her and she asked me for burp cloths. I made 20 burp cloths out of plain white handtowels. I bought a package of 12 white bar towels at Sams Club years ago thinking they would make great bibs, but I never did use them. So, I cut a few of them into fours and serged up the cut edges. They look like washcloths now, but they'll be really handy I'm sure. I have time to put some cute appliques or trim on them. I want to sew princess dresses and kick off a little boutique, but it isn't happening with all the other sewing I seem to have. I'm storing up a lot of ideas though!
Father's Day is coming up soon. The girls and I picked out a gift for Keith and it's been hiding in the van for a while now. Libby picked out a card a couple of weeks ago to mail to her new Grandpa and it's still just sitting here. Now it will be late. Darn. The Mother's Day cards are still sitting here too. I won't be winning any awards for being a good post-office patron, but the sentiment is there. The cards are here. Maybe I'll make it my New Year's Resolution to be better about honoring Mother's and Father's Days next year. Yeah... next year. :)
I don't know why June feels like it went so fast already. Probably because it did. I just don't think we did much though. The days have just been going along rather quickly without any outings to speak of (except for the doctor appointment and the camping trip).
Your cup of coffee should be gone by now, this was a long catch-up blog post!
Friday, June 15, 2012
An Interesting Camping Adventure
Fenna called it. She said "going camping is going to be interesting". But, she really wanted to go so Keith planned out a two night trip and we packed up and went. Keith and I both promised that yes indeed, it would be interesting. I believe we were true to our word on that.
We planned a two night tent camping adventure on Mount Palomar just two miles from the observatory. It is a nice beautiful pine tree covered mountain. Lovely!
We drove up there and the flies were so terrible that we were all frantically waving our arms around our heads after a minute. We walked around a bit and decided that we wouldn't be able to cook or enjoy ourselves with the fly population so hungry for us. They acted like we were the biggest and best turds who ever set foot on the mountain! After 10 minutes, we were done and headed back down the mountain to a campground closer to town near a lake.
We were going camping with our friends, the Block family and their dogs and when they called and said there were too many flies in the campground I thought, "oh he's exaggerating." Unbelievable!
We ended up at Lake Skinner, a nice lake that you cannot touch. It is illegal to touch the water because the pollution from your human body might be harmful to the fish. The fish have the same view of us that the flies do. This is the event site of the Temecula Balloon and Wine Festival, and the site of the new splash pad where I took the kids a few weeks ago. This might be good.
This campground is only 20 miles from town. It took us over 3 hours to get there after going up to Palomar Mountain, back down, stuck in traffic on the freeway, across town and out the other side. The kids were sick to death of being in their carseats. They sensed it was taking way too long to get to our campsite. These kids of mine are geniuses!
The original plan was that we would leave the house at 1pm, go set up camp and then I would bring the girls back to town for their swimming lesson class and head back up. Well.... that didn't happen. We left around 2:30 and arrived at our campsite at nearly 6pm. Swim lessons were pretty much over by then. They missed the first lesson of this new session, oh well.
Lake Skinner campground is nice enough, but they don't have tent spaces. The camping spots are designed for RVs and it's set up like a parking lot. There were other tent campers there too, but like us, they had to set up on a hard packed dirt pad.
We set up our campsite on the tiny pad that was our assigned camp spot and got to work with cooking dinner. Things were looking up! As long as there is food, there will be happiness, right? Right! I made Dollywood Potatoes over the propane burner.
Fenna was very worried about the size of the tent. She mentioned it a million times and we kept telling her that it was a 4-person tent but it would hold all of us and the dog fairly comfortably. She knew that if it was a 4-person tent, it was really a 2 or 3 person tent. She was pleasantly surprised when we popped it up! We set up the little girls' tent too, just for fun (and elbow room since Fenna sleeps like a starfish).
The tent campers in the next parking, er, camping row were loud. We got to hear some very colorful language and dogs barking all evening and into the wee hours of the morning. At least they were happy people. Loud happy inebriated campers.
Our friends camped in their luxurious hotel on wheels. They had a bathroom, running hot water, electricity, tv and internet. The probably slept great too.
I couldn't sleep. We finally laid down in our tent around midnight. We kept waiting for the campground to settle down and become somewhat quiet, but that wasn't happening so we caved and tried to sleep through the racket. Finally, around 2am, a little Spanish lady yelled "Would you please be quiet! Thank you!" There is something about the voice of a little Spanish lady that scares people. It worked too, the entire campground was dead silent after that. Lady, I thank you.
Keith and Fenna slept great. Sandy slept with us in our tent but she was all over me, laying on my legs, then pushing up against me, stealing my blanket, and then she ended the night by sleeping on my pillow. She's going into the pink tent next time!
At one point, I forgot who was sleeping where and I thought Fenna was Keith, but she was in her own sleeping bag so I was very confused. I thought I stole all the blankets off of him so I patted her down thinking she was Keith, and I just wanted to know if he was cold laying there without any blankets. Then I was grabbing her wrist to see his watch to find out what time it was. She wasn't cold, had no watch on, and wasn't Keith. She let me know it too. Whoops.
I wasn't comfortable at all. I tried and tried to sleep and I was dead tired, but I just laid there on the hard ground with my eyes wide open. I slept on and off from 2ish until nearly 5am and then I was awake for the day. I think I got 3 hours of sleep with 23 wakings in there, it was ridiculous! Around 5:30, I decided to quit trying and I just got up.
Gracie woke up a little before 5am and she said, "I wish I had some tape so I could tape up those birds." Keith was making gun noises while looking at the door of the tent. She is her father's daughter.
After heating up the tea kettle for some instant coffee.. I wandered the campground and my husband took some great photos while I snapped some sand-spotted pictures to start the day. We were going to need some decent photos to pretend the camping trip wasn't a complete failure.
It was great to wake up so early and see hot air balloons! (Can I say I woke up if I never really slept?) They were off in the distance but we were able to see them well enough, even through the morning fog. It was a lovely way to start the day! We saw three balloons in the sky. Very pretty. Keith saw a chicken hawk too. He thinks that's why the birds were going crazy around 4am; the chicken hawk had breakfast.
The kids had a lot of fun playing in their pajamas on their scooters and on the playground. Then we went for a walk to the untouchable lake. The water is used as a public water source, so fish and waterfowl can poop in it but we can't dip our toes in. Libby's feet stunk so bad she would have killed the fish anyway. Those polka-dot shoes are almost 2 years old and she loves them, but they smell horrid.
The walk to the lake was nice. The fog lifted and the sun came out and heated things up pretty quickly. It was still fairly early so the splash pad was not operating yet, which was fine by me. The kids were disappointed though. I promised them we'd come back another day when it's working. I didn't bother to inform them that the water turns on at 10am. They don't need to know everything.
Now that it was nearly 10am, we'd come to a unanimous decision that we were done camping. We had lunch (hey, breakfast was 5 hours earlier), took down the tents, packed up the gear and drove the short distance home. We were home at 11:15am. So much for our planned two nights of camping, we camped for 16 hours.
After such a short campout, there is still a ton of cleanup to do after arriving home! The van doors were open most of the time in the evening, and the smoke from the fire went into the van stinking up the whole works. I have to rug dr the interior now. Joy. Camping in dirt makes everything dirty. I'm still cleaning from our little excursion.
The first thing we all did when we got home was to ask ourselves, "Am I more tired then dirty or more dirty than tired?" We all decided we were filthy but more tired, so we slept. Everyone slept four or five hours. Apparently I wasn't the only one who didn't sleep well in our parking spot!
Now that this interesting camping adventure is over, I can honestly say that I have RV envy.
We planned a two night tent camping adventure on Mount Palomar just two miles from the observatory. It is a nice beautiful pine tree covered mountain. Lovely!
We drove up there and the flies were so terrible that we were all frantically waving our arms around our heads after a minute. We walked around a bit and decided that we wouldn't be able to cook or enjoy ourselves with the fly population so hungry for us. They acted like we were the biggest and best turds who ever set foot on the mountain! After 10 minutes, we were done and headed back down the mountain to a campground closer to town near a lake.
We were going camping with our friends, the Block family and their dogs and when they called and said there were too many flies in the campground I thought, "oh he's exaggerating." Unbelievable!
We ended up at Lake Skinner, a nice lake that you cannot touch. It is illegal to touch the water because the pollution from your human body might be harmful to the fish. The fish have the same view of us that the flies do. This is the event site of the Temecula Balloon and Wine Festival, and the site of the new splash pad where I took the kids a few weeks ago. This might be good.
This campground is only 20 miles from town. It took us over 3 hours to get there after going up to Palomar Mountain, back down, stuck in traffic on the freeway, across town and out the other side. The kids were sick to death of being in their carseats. They sensed it was taking way too long to get to our campsite. These kids of mine are geniuses!
The original plan was that we would leave the house at 1pm, go set up camp and then I would bring the girls back to town for their swimming lesson class and head back up. Well.... that didn't happen. We left around 2:30 and arrived at our campsite at nearly 6pm. Swim lessons were pretty much over by then. They missed the first lesson of this new session, oh well.
Lake Skinner campground is nice enough, but they don't have tent spaces. The camping spots are designed for RVs and it's set up like a parking lot. There were other tent campers there too, but like us, they had to set up on a hard packed dirt pad.
We set up our campsite on the tiny pad that was our assigned camp spot and got to work with cooking dinner. Things were looking up! As long as there is food, there will be happiness, right? Right! I made Dollywood Potatoes over the propane burner.
Fenna was very worried about the size of the tent. She mentioned it a million times and we kept telling her that it was a 4-person tent but it would hold all of us and the dog fairly comfortably. She knew that if it was a 4-person tent, it was really a 2 or 3 person tent. She was pleasantly surprised when we popped it up! We set up the little girls' tent too, just for fun (and elbow room since Fenna sleeps like a starfish).
The tent campers in the next parking, er, camping row were loud. We got to hear some very colorful language and dogs barking all evening and into the wee hours of the morning. At least they were happy people. Loud happy inebriated campers.
Our friends camped in their luxurious hotel on wheels. They had a bathroom, running hot water, electricity, tv and internet. The probably slept great too.
I couldn't sleep. We finally laid down in our tent around midnight. We kept waiting for the campground to settle down and become somewhat quiet, but that wasn't happening so we caved and tried to sleep through the racket. Finally, around 2am, a little Spanish lady yelled "Would you please be quiet! Thank you!" There is something about the voice of a little Spanish lady that scares people. It worked too, the entire campground was dead silent after that. Lady, I thank you.
Keith and Fenna slept great. Sandy slept with us in our tent but she was all over me, laying on my legs, then pushing up against me, stealing my blanket, and then she ended the night by sleeping on my pillow. She's going into the pink tent next time!
At one point, I forgot who was sleeping where and I thought Fenna was Keith, but she was in her own sleeping bag so I was very confused. I thought I stole all the blankets off of him so I patted her down thinking she was Keith, and I just wanted to know if he was cold laying there without any blankets. Then I was grabbing her wrist to see his watch to find out what time it was. She wasn't cold, had no watch on, and wasn't Keith. She let me know it too. Whoops.
I wasn't comfortable at all. I tried and tried to sleep and I was dead tired, but I just laid there on the hard ground with my eyes wide open. I slept on and off from 2ish until nearly 5am and then I was awake for the day. I think I got 3 hours of sleep with 23 wakings in there, it was ridiculous! Around 5:30, I decided to quit trying and I just got up.
Gracie woke up a little before 5am and she said, "I wish I had some tape so I could tape up those birds." Keith was making gun noises while looking at the door of the tent. She is her father's daughter.
After heating up the tea kettle for some instant coffee.. I wandered the campground and my husband took some great photos while I snapped some sand-spotted pictures to start the day. We were going to need some decent photos to pretend the camping trip wasn't a complete failure.
It was great to wake up so early and see hot air balloons! (Can I say I woke up if I never really slept?) They were off in the distance but we were able to see them well enough, even through the morning fog. It was a lovely way to start the day! We saw three balloons in the sky. Very pretty. Keith saw a chicken hawk too. He thinks that's why the birds were going crazy around 4am; the chicken hawk had breakfast.
The kids had a lot of fun playing in their pajamas on their scooters and on the playground. Then we went for a walk to the untouchable lake. The water is used as a public water source, so fish and waterfowl can poop in it but we can't dip our toes in. Libby's feet stunk so bad she would have killed the fish anyway. Those polka-dot shoes are almost 2 years old and she loves them, but they smell horrid.
The walk to the lake was nice. The fog lifted and the sun came out and heated things up pretty quickly. It was still fairly early so the splash pad was not operating yet, which was fine by me. The kids were disappointed though. I promised them we'd come back another day when it's working. I didn't bother to inform them that the water turns on at 10am. They don't need to know everything.
Now that it was nearly 10am, we'd come to a unanimous decision that we were done camping. We had lunch (hey, breakfast was 5 hours earlier), took down the tents, packed up the gear and drove the short distance home. We were home at 11:15am. So much for our planned two nights of camping, we camped for 16 hours.
After such a short campout, there is still a ton of cleanup to do after arriving home! The van doors were open most of the time in the evening, and the smoke from the fire went into the van stinking up the whole works. I have to rug dr the interior now. Joy. Camping in dirt makes everything dirty. I'm still cleaning from our little excursion.
The first thing we all did when we got home was to ask ourselves, "Am I more tired then dirty or more dirty than tired?" We all decided we were filthy but more tired, so we slept. Everyone slept four or five hours. Apparently I wasn't the only one who didn't sleep well in our parking spot!
Now that this interesting camping adventure is over, I can honestly say that I have RV envy.
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