Red Rock Overlook Hike in Pictures

I know I haven't written in nearly a week, and for that I am truly sorry.  I have tons and tons of ideas floating around in my head, many of which are in various stages of my writing process and sitting in Blogger waiting for me to get back at it.  I am also working on a guest post that will be showing up pretty soon...

But enough with the excuses!  I thought I would share with you, in pictures, why I have gotten little to no writing done today.  It was just too beautiful outside to be sitting inside with my laptop in front of me!  Hubby and I took the Crazies to Red Rock Overlook, a nearby park, for an afternoon hike and geocaching adventure.

Princess, styling & profiling in her very
"fashionable" hiking gear... she yelled "GEOCACHING"
just before I snapped this.  :)

And they're off!

Happy Campers, the Next Chapter

Greenbrier Lake

Last Friday after school, the Crazy Train rolled into Maryland's Greenbrier State Park for our second pop-up camper adventure.  We figured, what better way to spend a three-day weekend than in the woods?!  Although it was a somewhat whinier trip than our first, it seems that fun was had by all.  Even the cooler temperatures and drizzly Sunday couldn't spoil the fun for my ladies.

The Crazy Train Olympics

I have to admit that I'm not much of a fan of televised sports.  Not even the Olympics arouses my interest much.  I will occasionally watch the beach volleyball, since those are about the hottest athletes to ever walk the face of our planet.  A bit of the high diving competition never hurts, either-- those insane divers are fearless and amazing!  (They make me just dizzy watching them.)  I will watch some gymnastics too, for the same reason I watch diving-- gymnasts are truly unbelievable!  I wish I could do those things, so I live vicariously through them for a few moments, until it becomes depressing how obviously low their BMIs are, and I begin to feel the need to self-medicate with ice cream.  (It also occurs to me that those little girls could totally kick my ass.  I have never even imagined myself in as good of shape as they are in!  Even when I played basketball and spent hours everyday in the gym, I didn't hold a candle to the fitness level those girls achieve!  Ugh.  But I digress...)

I have tried this week to interest Princess and Birdie in watching some of the Olympic competition.  Why not, right?  After all, the Olympics only happens every four years, and there are some great lessons in sportsmanship and dedication to be learned there.  Even if the girls got totally addicted to watching the games, it would all be over in a few days, and life would go on as normal (no possibility of fixating on it they way they did with the Pocahontas movie or Sonic X ).  I tuned into the equestrian event, thinking the horses might tickle their fancy-- not even a flicker of interest.  We also tried swimming, water polo, volleyball, and gymnastics, all with flagging enthusiasm.

After many attempts at watching many different sports, Birdie finally asked me "I don't understand.  Why do these people practice these sports so much, Mom?!  Wouldn't it be better to know that you are the best at a sport naturally, without all the practice?"

A Milestone in the Making

This is how Birdie's feet fit on the scooter--
 in Kindergarten!  Imagine how they look now!

This afternoon we had a major breakthrough in the land of the Crazy Train.  After Birdie concluded her performance of the first annual K Lane Big Top Circus (which I can't even describe in words, so don't ask), she and the rest of the neighborhood kids began to play in the front common yard.  Eventually the playing turned to riding, and all the kids went to retrieve their "wheels".  A couple of kids came out with their Razor scooters, several more brought their bikes (sans training wheels), and Birdie dragged out her 3-wheeled Dora the Explorer scooter.  She's had this thing since she was four-- and it shows!

Community Fun Run

This morning, my husband and I took the little ladies to participate in the AV Community Fun Run.  Birdie thought this was a marvelous way to celebrate Earth Day, since we'd be walking or running rather than "wastefully burning gasoline".  I think the irony of our driving to the race site slipped right past her.

Waiting with Daddy for the Fun Run to begin

When we arrived at the run, my Princess and Birdie instantly noticed the free snacks and bottles of water everywhere.  "I feel pretty hungry, Mom."  Of course, you do Birdie.  After all, breakfast was a full 40 minutes ago.  I explained that those snacks were for after the run-- if you finish without whining.
With that said, Birdie couldn't wait for the Fun Run to begin.  She had her eyes on the snack table prize from that moment on.

Jack the Ripper (Among Other Things) Makes My Neighbors Nervous

Birdie exploring the yard

My family has lived in our current house for nearly five years now, and it has been just recently that the neighborhood kids have really started to "get" my girls.  I know this comes as a shock to you, but Princess and Birdie aren't exactly-- how should I put it?-- "down with" kids their age.  They are reeeee-ally not into most of the outdoor games their peers like to play, either.  (You know, like tag, or riding bikes, or soccer-- just about anything requiring physical contact or eye contact.)  THAT is a problem.  When you are seven and you don't usually like playing seven year-olds' games with seven year-olds, making and keeping friends can be challenging-- to put it mildly.  But my kids and my neighbors' kids keep trying, so there is still hope.

The way my kids play-- or don't play-- with other children makes everyone else in the 'hood nervous.  With Princess and Birdie, you can count on lots of scowling and shouting and very little sharing and sportsmanship...  Unless, of course, by sportsmanship, you mean that they are going to win.  Then there is lots of sportsmanship-- right up until it becomes unsportsmanlike gloating.

Geocaching

Yesterday was a beautiful spring day that absolutely could not be spent indoors.  Also, being the day after our all-day mac and cheese feast (aka Mac-stravaganza), we could not let inertia get the best of us, for fear that all those cheesy calories would take up residence in our pants.  My husband and I decided to take the girls geocaching at a local park near the Potomac.

What is geocaching, you ask?  I could spend hours of your time explaining this wonderful outdoor game, but in a nutshell, it's treasure hunting.  All around the world, people have hidden little treasure boxes for others to find.  The GPS coordinates of the boxes are posted online along with a few topographical clues.  You download this info and you have yourself a treasure hunt!   Are you going to end up with gold doubloons at the end of your trip?  I never have but I guess some idiot out there might leave something valuable in one of these caches.   The boxes are usually cleverly disguised waterproof containers that have a logbook, which you sign when you locate the cache, and some swag.  This swag-- or treasure, as my kids call it-- is very much like the treasure I mentioned in an earlier post about my Birdie's room.  You find a range of items, such as ancient Happy Meal toys, buttons, pins, magnets, business cards, costume jewelry, foreign coins, belly button lint.  It's all pretty much junk, but to Birdie and Princess it is worth hours of trekking around the forest (which makes this junk very valuable to me.)