We just got back from a really fun overnight camping trip (yes, camping generally does mean overnight, but in this case I mean we spent just the one night). Unfortunately, as I pulled out the camera to capture all the fun, all I got was a dead battery message. Sigh... Anyway, we had a lot of fun with some families Jeff grew up with. Two of the boys were Regan and Hadyn's ages, and the four of them got along wonderfully. It was funny to see Regan trying to balance on that fine line between being scared that Jeff's friend, Scott, was taking us on a 10:00pm bear hunt, and laughing at the fact that we really didn't expect to see any bears. We did have one glitch in our otherwise perfect trip. The zipper on the door of the tent broke, and would not close. Normally this would not a major problem, I just figured we'd keep the lights off inside the tent to keep the bugs inside to a minimum. I didn't quite work out that way. First, we had just gone on a "bear hunt", and second, Regan can read now, and could understand the signs posted at the outhouse that there were indeed bears in the area and to keep our garbage safely contained. Well, everyone knows that bears politely wait outside of zipped up tents, but actually go inside tents with broken zippers. This caused some understandable panic in Regan and Hadyn. Not to fear, Jeff and Scott marched off like the men they are to fix the tent. 15 minutes later, they came back. We were a little short of duct tape, but the door was sealed with bear-proof tape. Luckily our tent has two doors. Crisis averted.
Upon returning home, we quickly cleaned up and got ready to go to visit yet more friends (could we be more popular?) for a birthday party. Jeff announced that he needed a haircut. Now, many of you have heard me talk about how much I like it when Jeff cuts his hair really short, aka, with the clippers. Well, I've been trying to convince him to do it again, and I finally wore him down. We, of course, started with your basic mohawk, which, truly, Jeff looked great in. I'm not just saying that, he could totally pull it off. Sadly, this picture is as close as most of the world will get to seeing it. I'll try to wear him down on the mohawk being a permanent fixture, but until then, at least I get the buzz cut.
And yes, I did say our camera battery was dead, but it was a mohawk! It had to be captured. I charged the battery for 2 minutes, and was able to get exactly one somewhat blurry picture out of it before it died again. Enjoy. Feel free to leave your positive comments about the mohawk. Maybe if we all in blog-world team together we can see more of Jeff's wild side in the future.
Into 29 pints of stewed tomatoes. These will be added to the 18 pints we got a week or so ago. It's by far the best harvest we've had from our tomato plants. 
Regan discovered a new obsession/talent/skill. Hadyn gave her an embroidery kit for her birthday and I finally sat down with her to show her the basic stitches. She ran with it and loves it. She actually was surprisingly good at it very quickly. She has a good touch for how big to make her stitches and how hard to pull. 
We ended today with ice cream cones in the backyard. You can't see Jeff in this shot, but the girls are tormenting him with the ice cream cones and are giggling as he tries to steal their treats.
It was a good weekend.
Her new Didj, which on top of being able to play games on, she can program with her spelling words and current math topics each week and have it make games for her. Cool.
Mad Libs. It was cool when I was young and I thought it was cool that they were still popular. What is even cooler is that I can still remember what most of the parts of speech are...
Blowing out the candles on her special request lemon cheesecake.
