Springfest 2012

We survived another Springfest!  I sure do love this time of year.  Winter is over, the grass is green, flowers are blooming, I can (sometimes) have the windows open if the pollen isn’t too bad, and we go to Springfest.  Springfest is my happy place.  It’s not because of the music or the festival or the hippies or any of that stuff.  That stuff doesn’t get me.  It doesn’t bother me, but I’m just not into it.  It’s because I get five days (at least!) with no responsibility, my camper, lots of good food, a glass of wine or a yum-yum drink in my hand, and my kids (and husband) running free like a bird!  I have a hammock under my rear end, and my feet floating in the air.  I have music playing in the background and I don’t have to change the station because of a commercial.  I have friends all around me, and personally, life is just great at Springfest.

We have been going for 10 years now.  Well, Jim for ten, me for nine.  I met him shortly after Springfest in the summer of 2002.  I think we might have missed one a few years back, but it was probably made up for by going to Magfest.  I’m not so much a fan of Magfest anymore, but that’s because all of the kids are now in school and we can only pick one to go to.  Springfest seems to have won over Magfest, so that’s where it is for me.

My kids love Springfest.  They absolutely love it.  And I love that they love camping so much.  I can remember camping as a kid with my parents.  We also had a camper.  I just have one memory of it, and it was at Ft. Wilderness at Disney World, but I don’t remember the Disney part, just the camping part.  Shortly after that my parents sold the camper and that was the end of our camping days.  I loved that Jim liked camping when we met, and am thrilled that our children now love it.  It’s such a fun family experience.

Here are some pictures of us this Springfest.  I don’t have a lot and they are not the greatest, but just trust me when I say that we had a good time.  We really did.

We kidnapped the Ball’s and took them with us.  Jim and Dave went down the night before us, and Christy and I took the kids after school and Thomas’s doctor appointment the next day.  It was great arriving at camp already set up.  Now if we could just leave early and not have to do the clean up life would be really good!

We also kidnapped Mr. Pike and dragged him along.  He’s definitely returning next year.  He can’t stop talking about it.  On this particular morning we took him with us for our early morning golf cart drive.  We went on some trails that we had never been on before and soon found ourselves lost.  It didn’t matter one bit to us, just made the adventure that much more fun!

There was one really steep hill that the boys and I decided to let Mr. Pike handle it alone.  He did great, which was to be expected.

James took over driving at that point.  He’s a pretty good driver (when he doesn’t drive into any ditches!)

Proof that I was along for the ride and didn’t just leave my kids abandoned for the week.

We went swimming in both the river and the pool.  This little man was so cold and so tired he curled up in my lap and almost fell asleep.  I took him back to the camper just after this picture was taken and he slept for at least two hours.

We always end up with some sort of freaky joke at camp.  This year it was this creepy clown.  Someone shoved a pole up it’s rear end and he went around to all of the shows and chased people around the campfire.  Rumor has it he’s going to end up on tour with Donna the Buffalo, but I am not sure if it’s really gonna happen.  The kids handled Mr. Creepy much better than a lot of the adults did.

Somehow we ended up with a traveling massage therapist at our camp.  Lots and lots of people got a massage, including Thomas.  Not bad, eh?

Mommy and Tom Tom chillin’ in an orange and blue hammock.  He loved swinging in the hammocks and I couldn’t help but encourage it whenever we saw an empty one.

Jim and his boys during one of the shows.  Thomas doesn’t have the patience for music (takes after his mom, I guess), but James can hang with his dad at the shows like a champ.   Guess Jim can take him to all the concerts once he’s older.

I let the boys get henna tattoos while we were there.  Thomas got a train and James got a snake.  I love the henna tattoos.

There was his stump behind the soundboard that the kids liked to climb.  There are four kids on it in this picture.  At one point the kids were climbing up and jumping into Jim’s arms.  He was exhausted.  It sounded good at first, but he was done after the third kid, and we had a lot of kids there.

James, Josh, and Thomas with Mr.  Creepy.

Here are all the kids that we camped with.  There were 14 total.  These kids had a blast and came home dirty and tired.  But it was worth every single minute of it!  Just ask them.

No more cast!

Lucky for Thomas he’s young and his bones are pliable.  They also heal very fast.  He only had to keep his cast on for three weeks.  In all, it was either wrapped up or casted for just under four weeks.  The doctor who casted him said it could come off after three or four weeks, and I gladly picked three (hoping and praying it was healed) because I didn’t feel like dealing with a cast at Springfest while camping.  When I took him in (just hours before we left to camp), he removed it, took x-rays, and said he was good to go!  Yippee!

We signed it just a few days before it came off.  Right here is a signature from Chandra and Kalpana.

 

James was the first to sign it, and Jim drew him a train.

 

I signed it with a big heart, because this little one has stolen my heart.

 

He is so ready for it to come off.  He knew that it would come off and then we would go camping.  I am not sure if he was just excited to go camping, or if he was tired of having it on his arm.  Probably both.

It was dirty, but not as dirty as I had expected it to be.  This was when the first layer started to peel off.  It’s definitely a difference, but not as much as I anticipated.

 

His little hand was still swollen underneath, but was healed.  It was very dirty, too.  And his poor fingernail was so long and dirty.  I couldn’t wait to cut it.  I washed his whole arm the second the tech and doctor left the room.

 

His before and after.  All healed.  I’m happy.  He is, too.

Dying Easter eggs

Today I decide to dye eggs with the boys. I’ve done things like this in the past, and have learned that daddy’s shirts and rubber gloves are a requirement. My kids are, in absolutely no way, careful with dye.

I only had 16 eggs to dye, and I had no idea that they would be gone faster than it took me to mix up the colors. (And that was just measuring 1/2 cup of warm water and 3 Tbsp of vinegar.)

Thomas, bless his heart, did as well as he could at keeping clean. That last egg required him reaching into the cup to retrieve and then it was just too tempting not to dunk it over and over and splash all of the blue stuff all over, including the deck below and splashing his legs and feet.

Next time he gets a hazmat suit.

Now what to do with the eggs? Egg salad or deviled eggs? Tough choice.

An Auburn adventure

Jim was invited to a banquet with former lettermen and the current spring team at Auburn yesterday.  He was allowed to bring one guest and we decided that he would have a lot of fun with James.  I don’t know all of the details of the day, but I do know that they had a lot of fun and were in AU heaven.

Easter egg overload

Yesterday I took Thomas to the neighborhood Easter egg hunt.  James went with Jim to Auburn, which will have to be another post, so Thomas and I had a little fun on our own.

Pot ‘O Gold

Jim keeps having contests at work and thinks he’s an Ace because he’s got me in his back pocket.  It started in October for Halloween.  He came home and said that there was a luncheon and there was a prize for dishes that are brought.  It didn’t specifically say that the dish had to be a dessert, but he asked me if I’d make my spider cupcakes.  I did, but I also made my witch hats.  He won.  It was a gift card to a local coffee shop, so he got the prize.

Christmas came along and they did another contest.  People started hinting to him that they couldn’t wait to see what Maggie would make.  At least they knew that it wasn’t Jim that was slaving in the kitchen making all these fun treats.  This time I made these really cute Santa hats and my Christmas mice.  This time the prize was a gift card to Target.  I kept that one.

This contest is for St. Patrick’s Day.  Jim had his one-on-one with his boss yesterday and he came home telling me that I was in big trouble.  Mike didn’t want to talk a thing about work, but more about what I was making for the contest.  I am not sure that Jim told him exactly what I was doing, but even if he did, talking about it doesn’t really compare to the work that I put in to it.

I started baking yesterday.  I made 72 mini cupcakes yesterday and all of my frosting.  Today I ended up making another 24 mini cupcakes and 37 regular cupcakes.  I figured that if I was already baking, I might as well make 18 for James’s class and 12 for Thomas’s class.

Jim actually did help me with one thing.  He made my pot of gold.  I gave him a small plastic bowl and he spray painted it black for me.

I made my rainbow (red is really hard to make) and spent all day today icing cupcakes, entertaining a three year old, and arranging them on cardboard.  I originally was going to just throw some marshmallows on the left side of the rainbow, but since I had some silver cupcake liners, I decided to fill them instead.  At the end of the rainbow I put my pot and filled it with chocolate gold coins.

I sent a few pictures to Jim and he asked me to please make him a Leprechaun.  I have some fun icing tips and one of them makes hair.  I iced one of the big cupcakes (hince the 37 instead of 36) green, and used a big marshmallow as the face.  I added hair and a big beard.  I googled some hat ideas and came up with thin mints for the base, and an upside down peanut butter cup as the hat part, with a small piece of square cereal for the buckle.  I think it’s a mix between a pilgrim hat and a leprechaun hat.  I added that to his head and drew a face on him.  Kinda looks like Davy Jones to me.

Edited:

I started this post last Thursday and am just now finishing it on Tuesday.  Jim took the cupcakes to work and he displayed them pretty much how I invisioned it.  Ended up that it wasn’t a contest this time, which is fine, so no prizes.  I still had fun making them and I think everyone enjoyed them.  At least they all told him they did.  That’s all that counts, right?

Thomas playing

I walked into the living room and saw Thomas covered up under these blankets. He was laughing hysterically underneath. Ends up he was watching Tom and Jerry on the iPad under there.

Silly boy!

Mommy and Tom Tom

I got a little snuggle time with my baby down at the tennis courts today. Someone snapped a picture of it as proof!

Surprise visit from Grandaddy

About two weeks ago we got an email from Frank giving us his itinerary for his upcoming trip to Japan.  I noticed that he was landing in Atlanta at 7:43 for a layover and wasn’t leaving for Tokyo until just after 11:00.  I knew that was plenty of time for breakfast with his boys.  Jim called him and arranged for us to pick him up right at 8:00, and promised we’d have him back no later than 10:30.

We didn’t tell the boys what we were doing, but we got them up early and dressed for the outing.  James was convinced that we were taking them to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, but was easily distracted by a movie in the car.  He didn’t realize that we were at the airport until he saw the first plane.  He was still confused as to why we were there, so you can imagine his surprise when Grandaddy opened the door and crawled into the backseat with him.  I’m just sad that I didn’t video the surprise.

Thomas excitedly showing Grandaddy the airplanes!

Father and son.

Thomas and his Grandaddy

We took him to breakfast at one of our favorite little downtown eateries, Highland Bakery.  It has an excellent breakfast, and no one was disappointed.  Well, the boys didn’t like the syrup for their french toast, but if that’s all the disappointment for the morning then that’s great news!

Grandaddy also let them each pick out a cupcake to go.  Two happy kids!

 

It’s got a cast!

Sunday night sucked.  I made my post about how well he was doing despite all of the bruising and then was up hour after hour with him because he was so uncomfortable.  I felt terrible.  I prayed that God would give me the pain and let his little body rest.  I felt so bad for him.

Monday morning he woke up really early and crawled in bed with me.  We was so uncomfortable and even Jim felt like he had a fever.  I just thought that he was frustrated and tired.  I was pretty sure that he was going to stay home with me and not go to school.  By the time 8:30 rolled around he’d been up for hours and seemed to be doing better.  I made the call to take him to school.  He lasted two and a half hours.  Snack was apple sauce and he was so frustrated eating left handed, or by having his teacher help him, that he cried and asked to come home.  I had no problem picking him up and bringing him home.

He wouldn’t nap again, surprise surprise, but I knew that he was tired.  I pulled him on the couch with me and put on a movie.  I told him that if he wanted to fall asleep on my lap he could.  He was asleep within five minutes.  I got to hold him while he slept again.

Amazingly enough I made the transfer from my lap to the car seat without waking him and met Jim at his appointment.  He woke up just as we pulled into the parking lot.  It was a miserable hour and a half wait, but finally it was our turn.

The doctor asked if we wanted to look at the film again and I see that I put the break at the wrong spot in my previous post.  I’ll have to move the arrow, but not now.  The nurse couldn’t get all of the tape off that we applied so she cut through the splint.  When both the doctor and the nurse gasped after pulling it off, both Jim and I sighed.  I knew that sucker was on too tight.  While they wouldn’t admit that was what the problem was, we both knew it.  Hopefully there was no major damage done by that.

His poor hand is so swollen and bruised.  It had morphed into the shape of the splint that was on him.

We left it off of him for about 20 minutes just to see if the fluid would go back into his arm from his hand and fingers.  Jim just stood over him and itched and itched his arm.  He loved it.  I bet it felt terrific after being wrapped so tight for so many days.

The first day we took him to get checked the doctor asked him what he did.  He said that he fell on the table.  She joking asked if he fell on a stamp.  He wouldn’t let us wash it off either day.  I’m wondering if it will still be there when the cast comes off in a few weeks.

He did so well while he was recasted.  They decided to do a soft cast on him because of the swelling.  I can go back in a week to get a harder cast if I want to, or if the swelling has died down so much that it’s slipping.  If it’s still fitting fine then he can just keep this cast the whole four weeks.  The bad thing about this cast is that it only comes in white.  Typically they would just put a velcro splint on something like this, but not with a small child named Thomas.  That would be off by the time we hit the parking lot.

Here he is, quite proud of it.

He went to bed last night shortly after 7 and I expected to hear him all night again.  In fact, each time I woke up I was surprised that he hadn’t woken up yet.  He didn’t wake up when Jim got up for work.  He didn’t wake up when James got up for school.  He didn’t wake up until 8:00 this morning, and he’s been non-stop since.  No nap for him today.  Hopefully he’ll sleep just like that tonight and have a great day back at school tomorrow.