Our Weekend at Summer Camp

Phew.

I don't know how you parents do it.

This past weekend, John and I took our 'Little Brother' to a summer camp sponsored by Big Brothers & Big Sisters of America (BBBS) and we are exhausted.

We got back late Sunday night, and here it is Tuesday at noon and I am still recovering from our weekend.

I am still slowly drinking my morning cup of coffee and we just spent a while searching Youtube for clips of Carlton dancing.

We lead a busy and exciting life.

Anywho, this weekend was all sorts of fun and tiring.

We arrived at the summer camp around 11am on Saturday and did the usual icebreakers with the other 100 or so 'littles' and 'bigs.'

This basically involved us saying...

'My name is Ashlee and I would bring avocados to a picnic.'

'My name is John and I would bring jam to a picnic.'

Our little's two older sisters were at the camp which made him happy and John and I were the only married couple at the camp. With BBBS, you can be a solo 'Big' to a 'Little' of your gender or if you are married, you can do it together to a male 'Little.'

This was something we wanted to experience together and I am so glad we signed up for the program this way. I love seeing John interact with our 'Little' and just seeing how much of a positive impact our relationship on him.

Our first activity of the weekend was archery which our Little was soooo excited about. When we first told him about the camp a few weeks ago, this was the one thing that he kept talking about. I am glad it was our first activity of the weekend so he didn't have to wait any longer.

Waiting ever so patiently

 

Getting instructions...

First shot and he turned out to be pretty good!

Can you figure out which one is me and which one is Katniss Everdeen?

Didn't think so. 

 Somebody had to shame us all with his perfect form. 

After archery the rest of the day was filled with playing improv games, painting rocks, having 'Spirit' time which consisted of a lot of synchronized dancing and singing (which my husband purposefully hid from once he found out what it was), eating Smores by a campfire, playing carnival games, eating the 'vegetarian' dinner of white rice, going swimming in a big pool with a water slide, and participating in the 'Wacky Olympics' which was just a ploy to be covered by our Littles in hershey's syrup, shaving cream and applesauce. 

As it got dark on Saturday night we discovered that this was going to be the first night that our Little has ever slept away from home (he has never even stayed the night at a friend's house), so there was a lot of tears and homesickness. 

I was staying in a girl's cabin with one of his sister's so she helped me soothe him enough to stay at camp, but John had the adventure of sleeping with him in the boy's cabin that night. 

Neither of them got very much sleep that night and as soon as it was light out (6am) they finally left the cabin and went to the playground to spend the next few hours until breakfast. 

After breakfast we got to go fishing where our Little caught two fishes and John caught one too. 

As John was the only male Big in our group for that activity, he had the pleasure of unhooking everyone's fish.

The rest of Sunday was filled with more 'Spirit' time along with playing games with other kids his age.

We left camp and headed back to Atlanta for our Little's first professional sports game. 

We had some pretty amazing seats to the Braves game courtesy of John's mom and our Little enjoyed the game even though it was so hot that day.

After sitting in the heat for a few hours, we realized that thanks to our tickets, we had access to the club level at the Braves stadium and we found some seats in the shade and enjoyed the rest of the game from our new vantage point.

Our little was pretty emotionally and physically exhausted at this point and needed a little alone time.

When John and I saw this photo, we started singing 'All by myself.......' at the same time. 

After we dropped off our Little at his house, we stopped by the grocery store, got a frozen pizza, a bottle of wine and a bar of dark chocolate and sat on our couch for the rest of the evening watching 'The Sopranos.'

After this weekend, we have vowed to never have teenagers and that we will force our children to go from age 12 to 21.

No inbetween for us, thank you very much.

~ With Love, Ashlee ~

Blog Vomit - Round II

I haven't been hanging around here much lately so I would like to extend my apologies to all my readers (hi mom!) about that. I get a little bit introverted at times and just want to hang out with me, my husband and my puppy and not share a thing about my life. Other times I want to go, 'Look at me, look at me! I did something cool and/or I made some yummy vegan mocha fudge sauce!'

I am trying to not be quite so introverted and I think that my husband wants me to stop talking just to him about the delicious vegan mocha fudge sauce that I made.

There really isn't any cohesiveness in today's post, just a little hodge podge of what has been happening lately around here...

a) Two weeks ago we took our 'little brother' to Stone Mountain, Georgia to climb the giant stone mountain there. As someone who grew up in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, the idea of a 'stone mountain' in the middle of nowhere didn't make any sense. When it was described to me the first few times, I was like, 'So it's a mountain made out of entirely stone? No dirt? No grass? It's just hanging out without a single other hill around it?' 

And yeah, it is just hanging out and people climb it.

 

Just hanging out with our thumbs out on top of a stone mountain. If you look real close right over John's right shoulder, you will see downtown Atlanta.

b) I woke up at 6:30 am today (yeah me!). I have been crazy productive thanks to all the caffiene I started to ingest at such any early hour. The big downside of getting up so early though is that by 4pm, I have already eaten all of my alloted calories for the day. 

Damn you vegan mocha fudge sauce!!!

c) Have I mentioned yet that I made a vegan mocha fudge sauce today? It is crazy delicious. 

 Photo and recipe courtesy of the 'Love Food Eat' blog

I tried it in both a cup of hot coffee with a little almond milk and then in a big glass of almond milk with just a little bit of coffee. I think that the best way to enjoy it though is going to be by having some on top of pureed frozen bananas like a vegan ice cream sundae. Oh and with strawberries!! 

It is taking a lot of willpower to wait until tomorrow to enjoy that.

d) I was originally going to do an outfit post today but after further review of the photos, I decided that I hated my outfit. But I did love my hair, so here are a few photos of what my hair looked like yesterday. 

I have been wearing my hair curly now almost exclusively because of my new favorite product in the world. 

Miss Jessie's Pillow Soft Curl Cream

Miss Jessie's, I will happily be a spokeswoman for you because this curl cream is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. 

But please, stop making this smell like dryer sheets.

e) Yesterday my 'little brother' and I went and saw 'The Croods' together. It was really stinking adorable. I cried so hard during that movie that I had to hide the tears streaming down my face. As visually beautiful as it was, definitely not worth the extra $75 to see it in 3-D.

f) We are having people over this weekend for a BBQ/law school final studying session. Wives and girlfriends are coming over and this is the first time that I have ever had another female in my home since college that isn't a family member (that sounds so weird to write but it is true). I have suddenly grown very self conscious of where I live and am trying to look around trying to figure out what needs to be cleaned/fixed. There are so many things that we need to do, but since it is a rental, our hands are tied/super lazy on some things. All I know for certain though is that our copy of 'Everyone Poops' will be proudly displayed on top of the toilet. 

That's about all I got for now. See ya tomorrow!

~With Love, Ashlee~

Scavenger Hunt

Since October my husband and I have been involved with Big Brothers, Big Sisters of America. 

They allow married couples to be 'Bigs' to one 'Little' which is really fun for us. 

Yesterday, to celebrate the first day of Spring, we went on our Little's first scavenger hunt. 

We gave him a disposable camera and set him free; occasionally helping him with clues.

 

We ventured all around our city.

 

 

Kesean wants to be a police officer when he grows up, so one of his clues was to find a police man and take his photo. The officer was so nice and let Kesean hop on in the car for a photo op. 

They were acting 'cool'

For solving all the clues, he got a victory hot chocolate :)

 As did we :)