August 2011: Month-at-a-time scrapbook layout

Love the monthly scrapbook templates from Get It Scrapped and wanted to post this so Tami could see one I've actually finished. :-)

Christmas cards post!

I’ve used Shutterfly for my Christmas cards for most recent years – at least since Niall was born, if I recall correctly, which is ten years ago now! That year I created a quick, folding Christmas card with a very short (for me :D) message included, and didn’t write a newsletter as I usually do. It was great to have the option to do it all-in-one like that, with a newborn arriving on December 23rd! If I’d been just a bit more organized, I would have done it all ahead of time, of course. :D

But usually instead of a folding card, I usually order a Christmas photo card like the one above, with a picture of all the boys (or a collage of favorite photos) and a holiday greeting. I include it with our family newsletter, so everyone gets pictures plus updates and I don’t have a separate card to complete.

Shutterfly gets lots of business from me at the holidays, because I also always order a set of calendars every year for grandparents and family members. Picking a mix of appropriate photos from throughout the previous year and also somewhat-aligning the photo with the month/season is always a fun challenge. The calendars are beautiful, and always eagerly anticipated by the recipients.

I’d better get cracking this year, since we’ll be in New Zealand for the holidays (leaving mid-December!) so I don’t have nearly as much time to procrastinate as usual!

6th photo in 6th folder

Here's the 6th photo in the 6th folder in My Pictures - though it's kind of cheating because I don't keep my current photos in top-level folders in My Pictures but in a sub-folder called Photo Archives. :-) So this is from some pictures I scanned awhile back: my grandmother when she was a young lady.

Made a quick SmileBox for the grandparents today, with a few photos from our August camping trip to Lopez with Sieglinde, Vicki, Laly and Tori. :-)

Click to play | Make your own Smilebox

Wednesday, July 18: Home again at last

[Stacia] - We packed up in off-and-on drizzle this morning, which continued throughout the drive. Welcome back to the Pacific Northwest! :-) After temps in the 90's for much of our trip, we were glad for cooler, if wetter, weather.

We took a bypass freeway around Portland, on a tip from the AAA trip guide. So we crossed the Columbia River on a bridge I'd never taken before. We were all on the lookout for that "Entering Washington" sign and finally, there it was! Tynor took a quick break from his Gameboy to snap a photo for posterity.



We stopped for lunch at a rainy rest stop just north of the state border. There were covered picnic tables but it wasn't clear if they would actually keep the rain off us while we made and ate our sandwiches. So I set up shop with our backpack of bread, utensils and plates and our cooler of food on the bench outside the restrooms. Lots of comments from people coming and going: "Is that sandwich for me?" "How much for a pbj?" I told one guy $50 for a ham-and-cheese and he said it'd almost be worth it so he didn't have to make another stop. :-) He settled for the free coffee and cookies offered nearby.

By the time I got all the sandwiches made and other food parceled out, I almost wished we'd stopped one last time at McD's. But I just couldn't stomach another meal there, especially after our experience in Northern California. So at least the food was good, if time-consuming and inconvenient (life is full of trade-offs, right?)

Back in the car for the last big push: through Olympia, Tacoma, and then back up good ol' I-405 bypassing Seattle and Lake Washington and onward home. We arrived back at the ranch in the mid to late afternoon and it didn't feel at all like we'd been gone for 2 1/2 weeks. It's nearly the same amount of work to unpack after a three-day camping trip as an adventure as long as we'd been on. But the exhaustion factor kicked in shortly and I knew we'd been gone a LONG time. A worthy trip with lots of fabulous memories...but incredibly good to be back too.

Home sweet home.

Tuesday, July 17: Champoeg State Park, Oregon

[Stacia] - We traversed nearly the whole state of Oregon today, climbing through the mountain pass by Ashland and then down and on through the central corridor. This state park, Champoeg, is nearly at Portland so we'll have a relatively short trip home tomorrow. That was part of the plan!

Despite the many miles, we made good time today and arrived well before dark. Hooray! Tynor says this is the "perfect" state park - maybe because we have hookups once again? :-) He says he can tell we're back in Oregon again, too. Just a step up from the California state parks we stayed at.

We set up the popup with the canopy since it was actually a little drizzly (for the first time on this trip), and by dinnertime, we were glad to have the shelter. We started off having dinner at the picnic table but the little guys finished up eating at the folding table under shelter. Cory was a big help with the dishes!

Tynor got a fire going early on so we could have one last round of S'Mores for this trip. The fire survived the drizzle and small bouts of rain, and everyone was happy to have a final yummy treat before we called it a night.

We dragged our boots and raingear all the way down the coast and back up, and finally got to use them!

We saw these rental campers all over on our trip. I had no idea that the idea of rental campers had seized the public imagination so deeply. Most of them were this CruiseAmerica company, but there were a couple of other oddballs that we came across as well. I'm sure it's nice to just get the camper for when you need it, but I don't think I'd like being a driving advertisement for the company the whole time we were out.

Tomorrow we head for Washington and HOME!

Monday, July 16: Castle Crags State Park, Lake Shasta

[Tynor] Last night in sunny (and very hot) California. A quick stay in Oregon and we will be home at last. The site here has a really big drop off down to where the picnic table is along with a fire place. They are really nervous about bears, so they give us a bear-proof box that all of our food is supposed to go. It took a while to get it down there and back, but it saved us the trouble off having to buy new rations!

[Stacia] This campground is so different from last night! This morning we were on the edge of a blue lake, with dry, bare, brown hills all around and a few little scraggly trees at the campsites. Now we’re in rocky, mountainous bear country with Ponderosa pines and craggy peaks. We can’t see the crags the park is named for from the campsites, but we saw them off the freeway as we arrived and they’re amazing. That’s one thing that is really hard about staying just one night at each campground and having to pack up and head off straight away in the morning is that we don’t have a chance to explore and enjoy each spot. But we’ve gotten to see a lot of different campgrounds at least, so we know which ones we might like to come back to.

The campground was nearly empty so we drove around to see which site might work best. We ended up choosing the one that the park ranger recommended when we arrived since most of the other sites had tiny short car spots that we couldn’t fit the popup and car into, or really steep slopes that we couldn’t get up – or both. It was still a challenge to get the popup backed into place, since I had to back up a steep hill in the loop, then swing the popup into a narrow driveway. The van’s transmission was not very happy about it all, but eventually we managed - without driving either popup or van off the drop-off Tynor mentioned above either (!).

We spent quite awhile gathering all the food from the car and various compartments in the popup to pack them into the bear-proof cupboard down by the fireplace and table. Amazing all the places that you end up stashing food when kids can be hungry for snacks or lunch at any time on the road. If I’d known we’d need to pack up for bears, I would have made sure to have sealed Tupperwares to keep other critters out of the food while it was all in the cupboard. But for the one night, I didn’t see much mice or other nibbling on anything – or ants either (!).

This is also mosquito country and everyone got bit multiple times, despite applying Deep Woods Cutter the minute we arrived and staying inside the popup for most of the evening. This is our first round with biting critters on the trip, though, so it's hard to complain too much. It's interesting the different bugs in each location. Ants at San Onofre, flies at San Luis Reservoir (everywhere, despite the pervasive gusty winds). Niall the scientist finds it fascinating. We naturally end up bringing some of the animals with us as we head north, but fortunately not too many survive the whole day's drive, especially with our strong discouragement. Many a fly was shooed out the window on the freeway - amazing how many ended up in the car.

Our lunch stop today was in Sacramento. As I've mentinoed, one of the challenges on this trip is figuring out spots to stop and eat, if I just can't take another fast food joint. We pack lunch makings in the cooler, which we can get to by opening the tent trailer side door. But there aren't any handy rest stop available in the urban areas, nevermind in just the right place. So I have to look for another likely roadside spot where we can park (with the tent trailer, an added complication), stretch our legs, hopefully have some shade, and maybe even find a bathroom so we don't have to make yet another stop. We've gotten pretty lucky so far.

Today we were driving through Sacramento and overdue for our first break of the day, which would be lunch, running around, and bathroom break combined. I saw a sign for "Park Zoo" and took the exit, not having any idea how far the Park Zoo might be. Fortunately, it was just a mile or so from the freeway, another lovely grassy park with lots of big trees. There was also a "Play Zone" there - a small amusement park - but fortunately, only Tynor and I spotted that as we drove by and we proceeded to another part of the park to stop for our lunch. After sandwiches, we set off in search of a bathroom and found one nearby, adjacent to a public golf course. Lucky again! It's really hit and miss, finding these spots - kind of exciting and scary at the same time. The kids really need to eat, so I have to find something, somehow, and being in a totally unfamiliar place, flying by at freeway speeds, it's tough.

In addition to learning about how hard it is to find family-friendly break spots (unless you're in rest stop territory on the freeway), we've also become well acquainted with big trucks on this trip. Cars towing trailers have to travel at truck speeds (55 MPH on most roads), so I spend a lot of time barely passing a truck only to have it pass me again a little later. Or slowly passing a line of trucks, then passing them all again after we'd stopped for gas or a rest stop break. Sometimes one follows behind me, apparently deciding I've chosen the right pace for the road. I employ the cruise control most of the time, to spare my driving leg but also just to make sure my speed doesn't creep up and up.

One of the hardest parts about towing (aside from having to find double parking spots everywhere) is climbing, and even worse, descending the mountain passes. The van takes to shuddering pretty seriously if I brake hard at all going down a steep incline, so I've been taking them slow and trying to brake intermittently to hold off the shudder. I don't know if the braking system with the trailer is working correctly and that's just what you need to do with a trailer, or if it needs overhauling. Since my instinctive technique has been getting us by, I'm hoping I'm doing the right thing. But I will definitely be asking my popup forum folks (and my dad :-) about the officially correct way to drive these hills after we get back.

Did I mention that Cory, bless his heart, has napped just about every day on the road for the whole trip? Very helpful!