Gymnastics Camp

         

We sent Micah to a gymnastics day camp at Gymnastics North this week.  He went every day from 9 until noon.  He really enjoyed himself. 

They had a fun Monkey Maze which is kind of like the play structure they have at McDonald’s but much cooler.  They also have this really long trampoline that Micah really liked.  There was also this swing that 3 people could fit on, and the instructor would spin them around really fast.  The kids all loved that one.  And of course there was all the regular gymnastics thing you would think about.  There were the parallel bars, the rings, and the balance beam.

Every day Micah got to take a turn on the Super Swing, which is a bucket chair hooked up to giant bungee cords.  The teacher would then pull the chair back and let go like a giant slingshot.  The chair would shoot forward and then bounce all over the place.  It was cute because every time he would let out this squeal when he would shoot forward. 

The teachers said that Micah did really well in the camp.  He followed directions well (which makes Mama happy), and I’m guessing he learned how to do some basic gymnastics skills. 

It makes a mama proud!

Micah has been going to regular church with us, and then the kids are dismissed to Children’s Church usually after the offering.  He has really enjoyed being able to go. 

Once he turned 4, he was able to start going to the evening Children’s Church as well instead of being in the nursery.  A few weeks ago he was able to tell us his first scripture that he had memorized.  It was the Golden Rule.  He learned this after only 2 times attending the evening Children’s Church.  (Thanks Miss Angie!!!)  I just about started to cry when I heard him say it for the first time. 

Well this morning, we get home from church and were getting ready to go meet our friends the Websters for a picnic.  Micah started reciting the fruits of the Spirit, which is what he had learned in Children’s Church today.  He needed a little prompting from John, but he was able to do it mostly by himself.  And he didn’t stop there.  He has been repeating the verse all day!  The great thing was that after the first few times with prompting, he was able to name all the fruits, IN ORDER, without any prompting at all!  My heart has been overflowing all day!  I am just so proud of  my boy!

What makes this even more special is that Micah used to not talk all that much just a year ago.  Most of you know the trouble Micah had learning how to talk.  He had started talking a little at a pretty early age, and then one day just stopped.  It had worried me, even though most people just said he would talk when he was ready.

John and I really attribute the change in Micah to be an affirmation from God that we are now at the church where he wants us to be.  Because, you see, we had been attending a church with very few kids, and other troubles on top of that.  In fact, Micah was the only child in his Sunday school class.  He wasn’t getting much of a lesson. 

We had no sooner found our new church, when Micah started talking after just a couple of weeks.  Now, some people might see this as a coincidence, but John and I don’t.  We had been praying for months and months about whether or not to leave our former church, and really felt like God was leading us to North Avenue Baptist Church.  About a month or so after we had been attending North Avenue, Micah told us about what he had been learning in Miss Vickie’s class.  The lesson they had been going over week after week was “God with us.”  He told us that exact phrase.  When we figured out that was what he was saying the waterworks started for me.  When I told Miss Vickie about him telling us about the lesson, she told me that Micah was the first child she had that had actually verbalized what they had been learning.  Now to hear that about my son who had had trouble even talking was wonderful!

This may seem like a lot of babbling, but my heart is just so full, that I wanted to get it all out and share my joy!  My eyes are watering again just remembering it all.  I must sound like a crybaby, but I’m not ashamed to admit it.

Above all, I know that God has His hand on my little family, and especially my two little boys.  And that is the best place for us to be!

Olde Towne Market

Well, I did it!  I got my tables set up at the Olde Towne Market yesterday evening.  I was nervous, but everyone was very friendly, and I had some friends and family come by to wish me luck. 

If you don’t know, the Olde Towne Market runs for 8 weeks.  The farmer’s market runs year round on I Street by the Chamber building.  But when it’s time for Olde Towne, they move the farmer’s market and add the food booths, entertainment, and other booths and have it on H Street in the heart of Old Town Lompoc.

All in all, I think I did pretty well.  I sold some of everything that I had.  I won’t get rich, but I did make a profit!  So woo hoo for me!!! 

Here are some pictures of my tables:

I have reserved a spot for the rest of the time the Olde Towne Market is running with the exception of the Friday when we will be in Texas for my sister’s wedding.  Luckily, I only have to pay for the spot on a weekly basis.  I have also booked a table at a Christmas in July craft fair that will be held on base on July 25th.   The nice thing about that craft fair is that it is free.  I only have to donate a door prize. 

I had fun last night.  The ladies who had tables on either side of me were very friendly.  And it was fun to people watch.  So I’m excited about next week and the other opportunities that are coming my way.

An un-blurry Scrabble tile picture

I finally got an un-blurry picture of the Scrabble tile pendants I have made.  And don’t tell Disney about me using their pictures.  I don’t want them to send people out to break my kneecaps!

Will they sell…Or won’t they sell???

That is the question. 

I’ve been making some crafts.  And I got the crazy idea that I might be able to sell them.  So I’m going to try to sell them.  Every summer, the Chamber of Commerce puts on the Olde Towne Market fair on South H Street next to the Farmer’s Market. 

The price to rent a space was pretty reasonable, so I bit the bullet and rented a table for tonight.  I have been making Scrabble tile pendants…(I’m going to call them vintage, since I got the Scrabble tiles from my grandma who has had her particular Scrabble game since the dark ages!).  I am having trouble getting a picture that isn’t blurry.  I also made some glass tile pendants.

I am selling them with and without the cords, mainly because I wasn’t able to find enough of the black satin cord.  So the rest of the pendants are going to be displayed on a board.  The Scrabble tiles are on the top 4 rows, and the glass tiles are on the bottom 2 rows.  I thought that had made a ton more, but I guess it just seemed like I had. =)

I also made a couple different types of hair clippie holders for girls.  I started out making holders out of picture frames.  I also made them with cute little wooden shapes that I got from the craft store.

                          

And I have been making fleece tie blankets as baby shower gifts for a couple of years now.  I thought I would make a few of them and see if they sell.

              

So we’ll see how I do.  I used to sell PartyLite, and I have a ton of votive candles left over.  So I’m going to see if I can sell those too.  This is the first outing for Ragamuffin Express, so wish me luck!

First Annual Williams West Coast Family Reunion

This weekend, we participated in the First Annual Williams West Coast Family Reunion, a.k.a. camping in Sequoia National Park.  My Uncle Paul invited quite a few family members to make the trip to Sequoia National Park to go camping for the weekend.  I think the first time the trip was mentioned was while everyone was in Ft. Worth, Texas for Rebekah and Justin’s wedding last August (special thanks go to Rebekah and Justin for getting married so the idea could be planted way back then).

Not everyone could make it on the trip this time.  But since we all decided to do this annually, you can come next year.  It ended up being Joy, Sean, and Amber Mack (and Amber’s friend Madison), Uncle Paul and Jacob, and the Stults family.  Alison and Lori came up for the day on Saturday as well.

Uncle Paul and Jacob got there early on Friday to reserve our campsites.  In my opinion, they were the best campsites out there.  We camped right underneath two giant Sequoias.  We had a huge campsite (since the two campsites adjoined each other) and we weren’t too far from the bathrooms (a big deal for a girl who prefers a real potty over squatting in the woods).

Here’s the view looking up from our campsite:

While dinner was cooking, John took the boys to explore.  They ended up doing a little rock climbing, but couldn’t do as much as John would have liked since he had to also keep an eye on Caleb.  But they had fun nonetheless. 

 

For dinner, we had hamburgers and roasted marshmallows for S’mores.  Joy and Sean also made a chocolate cake with cherries in their Dutch oven.   DELICIOUS!  I think there’s something about campfire cooking that just makes it taste better.

 

                               

We enjoyed getting to sit around the campfire and tell stories and catch up on what everyone has been up to.  We finally called it a night and headed to the tent.  Sleeping in a tent with a 4 year old and almost 2 year old is not all it’s cracked up to be.  Both ended up waking up in the middle of the night, so John and I each had to cuddle up with one of them.  Needless to say, we didn’t get much sleep.

The next morning we woke up bright and early thanks to two little boys.  We had breakfast.  Uncle Paul had mentioned that there was this lake that you could fish at near the YMCA camp.  He said it was about a mile hike to the lake.  John had been really excited about getting to take Micah fishing, so all of us loaded up into our car and Joy’s Suburban and headed out.  Uncle Paul stayed at the campsite to wait for Lori and Alison.

We got to where we needed to park.  We unloaded the boys and the gear we needed for fishing.  Caleb was already cranky at this point thanks to his very early morning.  We started walking down the trail.  Both boys weren’t in the best of moods, but we decided to keep trekking.  Joy’s family was ahead of us.  We had maybe gone 3/4 of a mile when Joy came back to where we were to say that they had just seen a sign that said it was another mile and a half down to the lake.  I decided that I was going to head back with Caleb since he was so cranky.  The rest were going to continue on down. 

Now, the walk down wasn’t so bad since it was downhill.  But I wasn’t taking into account that if you go downhill, you must go UPHILL to get back to where you started.  Add to that the kicking and screaming little boy I had to carry and 6500 feet elevation and it does not make for an entertaining trip back up the hill.  Caleb finally cried himself to sleep on my shoulder by the time we made it back to the car.  I got us back to the campsite and laid him in the tent to finish his nap. 

A short while later, the rest of the group came back.  They never made it to the bottom.  They had changed their minds and came back up the hill.  They ended up going to Hume Lake to do their fishing.

 

                    

Micah really enjoyed getting to go fishing.  John said that Sean would catch a fish and then call Micah over so he could reel it in.  But Micah probably wasn’t doing it just right so the fish ended up getting away.  There was one fish actually caught.  Then Sean told Micah to throw the fish back in since it was so small.  John said you’re supposed to put the fish back in the water gently and it will swim away, but Micah literally did what Sean told him to do.  He heaved that fish back into the water.  John said that you could see the fish flying end over end.  Hopefully no fish were harmed in the making of this memory.

While the fishermen were gone, Joy, Amber, Madison, Uncle Paul, and I got to visit with each other.  Lori and Alison arrived a short while later.  We had lunch and then all the fishermen got back.  John went off to take a nap, and the rest of us decided to go look for the Chicago Stump.  We had to take some bumpy trails but we made it.  Sean, Madison, Amber, Jacob and Alison all climbed up on top of the humongous stump.

                       

                     

This is the only group photo that we have.  Sean took the picture, and Madison didn’t want to get in it.  And John’s not in it because he was back at camp taking that nap.  But at least we got almost everyone.

After the Chicago Stump we headed to go see the General Grant Tree.  Caleb fell asleep in the car, so the rest went to go look at the tree.

 

We got back to camp.  John, the teenagers, and Micah decided to go off exploring and rock climbing.  I knew we wouldn’t be able to do as much as them, but I took Caleb so we could watch.  John just kept saying afterwards that he was so proud of Micah for all the climbing he did.  He was doing it all by himself, and didn’t need John for any help.

We had another delicious dinner that night.  Sean made hobo dinners that you wrap in foil and cook over the fire.  They were so yummy!  And of course, what is camping without some more S’mores?  We sat around the campfire, and only ended up telling one ghost story.  John and I were really tired, so we tried to go to bed early.  Again, it was not the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had, but it was better than the first night.

In the morning, we had breakfast and started breaking camp.  The Mack family had to drive all the way back to Las Vegas so we wanted to make sure they were able to get an early start.  Once we were all packed, we said our goodbyes and headed off to home.

We had a really good time.  We all enjoyed our West Coast family reunion and thinking up ideas on how to make it better than the Texas family reunion.  You might be asking yourself, is that a challenge?  And I say, you betcha it is!

Faces

One of the blogs that I read is called A Cowboy’s Wife. She has a photo contest going on right now called the Blue Ribbon Photo Contest. This month, the theme is faces. If you read my blog regularly, you will have already seen this photo. But I wanted to submit it because it is a picture of 2 of my 3 favorite boys.

John took this when he and Micah went to the Dodgers vs. Rockies baseball game back in April. I just love Micah’s expression in this picture. He’s just got such pretty blue eyes! And if you have been hiding under a rock for the past 4 years and didn’t ever notice it, you should notice by now that Micah is John’s mini-me.

The rules of the contest say the photo has to have a name, so I'm calling this picture "Me and Mini-Me." Of course, the "Me" I'm speaking of is John, not actually me...Micah doesn't look anything like me.

Anyhoo, I hope I win. The prize is a Flip Mino HD Video Camera. The contest ends on the 20th. So there’s time if you want to enter a picture in the contest as well. Good luck if you do.