S'mores In Style

Home After Mountain Home

We went away last weekend, the whole family, to the mountains of Damascus. It was a Christmas gift. The gift of quality time spent with family. I honestly don't think we ever did that, outside a few moments on a Christmas or two and maybe an afternoon out on the town. This was intensive lockdown. 3 day at the top of a mountain with nothing but a lifetime supply of burger buns and a rusty axe in the garage. Should be fun!

I would've gotten to all of this earlier in the week but playing catch up can be time consuming. That and I left my phone charger at the mountain home so getting the photos off my phone proved challenging. But here we go...

We arrived early Friday evening to this slightly creepy mural. Thank goodness the place was all uphill from there. No but really, we climbed a lot of steps.

The children wasted no time in trashing the place.

The parents wasted no time relaxing.

We went flower picking.

We ran from Daddy.

Us Estlers don't mess around when it comes to the food.

There was also a rule about being caught without a beer in hand, no matter where you explored.

The main reason for the trip was some good ol' fashion smorsing.

Yuula was impatient.

Bonfires are multipurpose.

We've had some famous round of Michigan rummy with this group of people, and this one did not disappoint.

This one will go in my Sunday morning sunrise collection.

I was the first one up Sunday morning.

Maybe I was excited about breakfast.

This is not my plate.

Exploring the mountain.

I almost caught Yuula a butterfly.

She did learn the basics of eight ball.

A lesser imagineer would title this "Kissing Cousins".

Good time had by all, and I only left behind my phone charger.

Coloring Bridge To Cold Cookout

For their final day here in the Poke-A-Nose we thought we'd take a relaxing drive down to Easton and let the girls loose in the Crayola Factory. The place was bigger than I thought'd be and spanned the history of the crayon from its first wax pencil to the its latest shade of inchworm. Some of the activities were overwhelmed by aspiring artists and oddly enough, 17 year olds on spring break, but we still managed to find plenty for the girls to do.

this was a car that you can color on

I wonder how many kids transfer this idea to their family vehicle

she didn't quite get the color explosion

I feel like she really shined at the sculpture station

this piece is entitled "Dead Hippo Floating in Lake Wallenpaupack"

the chalk walk was intimidating to all of us

forever immortalized in a Spiderman coloring book

silly mirrors are self explanatory

the colordance wall was quite fun

so much fun that even I got in on the action

After that we hit a nearby park between to bridges along the river that had plenty of slides for these three. I think Yuula may already be due for an upgrade.

Yuula was in charge of ot letting the ball fall in the river

I was in charge of not letting Yuula fall in the river

she's a slide fiend

Then to home where despite the plummeting temperature and occasional gusts of wind we went ahead with the preplanned cookout of pork steaks. No one seemed to mind too terribly, except for Madison who wore gloves (but no jacket) thru dinner. We even had a visitor who proved to be a big fan of sweet potato fries.

Laura and her stack o' meat

simple & delicious

sweet potato fries make one bold

And then as the sun went down completely we made a fire and everyone got in their fair share of s'mores as we thought back over the past few days and found out that everyone's favorite moment was simply "Kitties!".

dry wood makes for easy bonfire

a roasting tutorial

charred to perfection

first s'more

second s'more

Good times!