lewis and clark had a journal. you, beth-annie, have a diary.

Saturday, February 28, 2009
Ava's first camping trip (or, I HATE Blogger's images function).

As I mentioned in the previous post, we went back to Madison in mid-October for a weekend of camping. Actually, we went for an all-day Saturday volleyball tournament Belleville was competing in (we went to most of their matches when we lived there and had become friends with the coach), and camping was a cheap way to stay the weekend (in addition to being something we had been wanting to do but hadn't gotten around to yet). We lucked out and got nice weather (with the exception of the first night, which was... chilly), sunny with highs in the 70s. All in all fantastic. There are kind of a lot of photos here, and a lot of Ava -- afterall, this was the first time she'd ever gone camping, so a lot of this was about documenting her reactions to everything.

To avoid having to pay three-days-worth of out-of-stater State Park fees ($10 a day -- ouch), we decided instead on a county park, which had of course a nightly camping fee, but no daily sticker fee in addition. We camped at Token Creek Park, which a few of you who visited us may recognize as the location of the pay-to-play disc golf course we tried out a time or two. This is the road through the campground, with the (mostly empty -- this was the last weekend of the season the campground was actually open) sites on both sides.

Most of the campsites weren't too far from the road, but we got one of the few that was set back a little more, though I wouldn't exactly call it secluded. It was very pretty, though (you'll notice the birch trees -- one of my favorites, by the way -- from previous post fame).

Ava discovers her pockets!

The ground was soft enough that Ava could help push the stakes in -- and I mean actually help, not "help." :-)

"Can we go in now, huh, can we, huh?"

Ava love tent.

Ah, there's the pocket again... :-) She seriously did love the tent. She was fascinated with it.

[Video: Ava goes in and out of the tent. If you can't tell, she's saying various forms of "in the tent" and "out the tent."]

This was going to be the first time she got to actually sleep in her sleeping bag, though she had played with it some previously (and loved it, I might add). After the long car ride and tent-making, she needed to blow off a little steam before supper, so she got in some nice sleeping bag aerobics.

Ah, this is the life...

Since we don't live here anymore, when we do make it back we like to eat at a few local favorites we can't get anywhere else, one of them being the Nifty Fifty's Sandwich Shop where we ate supper. It's a lot like a Maid-Rite, except better -- better food, retro candy (they had Clove and Black Jack gum at one point -- wow!), free jukebox, and run by a very nice couple (who I'm pretty sure have been there every single time we've gone in over the years... wow). [Side note: Ah, the days when Ava would still sit in a restaurant high chair... *sigh*]

A truck stop right outside the park had a restaurant/bakery attached, and we picked up a treat for each of us after supper. Ava's, as you can see, was a giant jack-o'-cookie! (She looks like she's concentrating very hard on that bite... :-P)

I think Mikey likes it!

[Video: Ava gets a little loopy while eating her pumpkin cookie. Lots of giggling at I-don't-even-know-what. Sorry the video's dark... couldn't be helped under the circumstances.]

And Josh's, of course, was a giant cream puff. Emphasis on giant. If you asked him today if there were such a thing as too giant a cream puff, I believe the answer would be a resounding "yes." (No, he didn't eat it all. Thank goodness.)

I believe I mentioned that the first night was chilly. Well, that may have been a bit of an understatement. It was cold. (Not the coldest camping I've ever done; that honor goes to Cheyenne, Wyoming in May 2002, when we were in hats and mittens in our sleeping bags) but it was cold enough that Ava was having trouble going to sleep, and thus so was I. So I moved her into my sleeping bag with me. After that she seemed to sleep great. (Me not so much -- I never sleep well when Ava's in bed with me. Oh well.)

The next day was Volleyball Day, so we headed to the town of Lodi north of Madison where the tournament was being held. The whole thing ran from 9am to about 3pm, and we were there for all but about the first hour or so. We did take some pictures here, but it's not really anything anyone would be interested in, so I'll kind of blow on by it.

You don't see banners like this one in Iowa. Unfortunately.

This was a lot of volleyball for a two-year-old, and Ava really did a great job putting up with it. Here her post-lunch nap is getting ready to kick in. (Once she fell asleep we had to keep trading back and forth holding her; girl's heavy now, and holding her through an entire nap was hard on our backs -- even sitting down.)

After volleyball Ava and Daddy switch -- she's refreshed and rarin' to go and he's... not. ;-) (I think this is around the time Ava really started to cooperate when we would ask her to give us a big smile for the camera. Probably what happened here -- they're usually of the wide-open-mouth variety.)

This is such an Ava look. Kind of sheepish, yet... wise. :-P

Lt. Cuteyface, reporting for duty.

After Daddy's cat nap and Mommy's quick shower (pretty nice showers for a campground, I must say), we did a little shopping, including picking up some groceries for supper that night (hot dogs, marshmallows, the usual fixin's). And firewood. Which was a bit of a fiasco. Nowhere had it. We checked the truck stop right by the park. A grocery store. Wal-Mart. A couple more convenience stores. Menards. Nope, nope, nope nope, nope. At this point I was getting seriously frustrated -- I had wanted to be back at camp with the fire going and making supper by the time the sun set, and here it was past that and seemingly no firewood to be found. We were finally saved by Home Depot (thanks for nothing, Menards) and got back in time for it to be pitch black -- just how I wanted to build a fire: without being able to see a thing (one fluorescent lantern's light does not go very far outdoors). I'm over it now, though. Really. :-P

We were afraid Ava might be afraid of the campfire since she didn't like candles at all, but aside from giving it a bit of a wide berth (which is preferrable, of course, to the alternative), she seemed okay with it.

The second night wasn't nearly as cold, thankfully, and Ava was able to sleep in her own sleeping bag -- we just moved her in between us instead of on one end. And I appreciated an actual good night's sleep. We had planned to go to church at our old one in Madison, but needed to have our entire campsite packed up beforehand. Didn't happen (we should have known).

After we did manage to get camp packed up, before we left altogether we decided to take a boardwalk trail through a marsh area -- something nice and easy for Ava to walk on.

As I do, I tried to get a few more scenic photos in on the walk... as much as a two-year-old's patience will allow. :-P

I love superwindy (that's wine-dy, not win-dy) streams -- they create photos like this one.

Madison is a beautiful city, and when I realized that we hadn't gotten any pictures like this one while we'd lived there, I decided to remedy the situation. You can see the State Capitol in the background across Lake Monona.

Courtesy of Zoom-Zoom (my pet name for our telephoto lens). Wisconsin's capitol building is prettier than Iowa's. (Sorry. :-P)

Random boat. This was in the parking lot of the park where I took the two above photos. I just liked this shot for some reason.

We got ourselves lunch at another local restaurant (Pedro's, whose thick, homemade tortillas I could eat an entire meal of in and of themselves), did a little more shopping and headed home.

beth, 3:24 PM || We are 11 comments. Read us!

Saturday, February 21, 2009
Autumn in Wisconsin.

In mid-October we spent a weekend back in Madison and went camping. Photos and story from the trip are forthcoming in another post, but for now I have some photos I took of fall foliage and the like. No captions this time, just nature's beauty.

These last two are a little different, but still from the same trip. Any guesses what they are?

beth, 5:54 PM || We are 16 comments. Read us!

Tuesday, February 10, 2009
"Bibby-bobby-boo."

Ava loves watching that song ("Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo" from Disney's Cinderella, of course, for those who don't speak toddler) on YouTube. That particular segment from the movie also includes the rest of the Fairy Godmother's magic after the song itself, and one day we realized Ava was mimicking a lot of Cinderella's actions from the scene -- shaking her head (her whole body, actually) "no" when Cinderella does, grabbing her dress, twirling around, etc. So what did we do? Got out our camera, of course, and got it on video! It's very cute. :-)

beth, 11:57 PM || We are 7 comments. Read us!

Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Good thing they didn't know we were rooting for the Cubs...

...Well, actually they did, "they" being a friend from our old church in Racine, WI who is a scoreboard operator for the Brewers (thanks, Jeff!). Unbeknownst to us, our friends Rich and Naomi (also of above name-in-lights fame), who we took to the Brewers/Cubs 2008 season-finale game, asked him if he would stick our names up there, and by golly he did! Way cool. :-)

beth, 9:20 PM || We are 4 comments. Read us!