Disc Golf Adventures

Seven years ago, give or take a week, Scott and I were in the beginning stages of dating. Being a poor grad student and an even poorer new teacher we looked to spend time together spending as little money as possible.

Check out those sideburns!

 While coffee shops and Scrabble was our typical date of choice, we also spent several of our weekends in the woods of Mobile, AL exploring the various disc golf courses. I've heard it called "folf" or frisbee golf as well.

Since I usually dominated in Scrabble, (I'm going to get grief about that statement ;) disc golf was a sport that we were relatively evenly matched. Ok, that is kinda pushing it too. He throws far! But we would usually play for two winners 1. whoever had the least amount of throws for the course, and 2. whoever had the longest putt. I didn't usually win with the least amount of throws, but I could get the putt...occassionally.

Since we are on this new kick to have some kind of family activity every Saturday, we found ourselves at a nearby bird sanctuary called Camp Catalpa for a little hike last weekend. The hike was less than a mile and easy, but we did make the exciting discovery of a disc golf course. So, we ventured this weekend on our first family disc golf adventure.

We practice at home in the back yard throughout the week to be a little more comfortable with throwing a disc. For Maggie's first throw, the disc landed on it's side and rolled like a penny all the way down the hill. Scott was hoping that wasn't an indicator of how the rest of the trip was going to go.



We let the girls throw their disc around as they wanted without following any rule or pattern. While Scott and I attempted to relive our glory days. We both need a lot of practice!

 



The girls enjoyed throwing the discs into the basket the most. Maggie even had a great putt from about ten feet from the basket. It surprised us all, but it made her day.








Ellie was good for the first few holes, but then decided she was over being outside.


She continued to say, "Don't touch me. I want to go home! When can I leave?" Some of this may have had something to do with the potty accident she had in the middle of the forest. Thankfully, I was prepared for such an event.


We were able to perk her up from one hole to the other after a quick wardrobe change.





The course was pretty nice, and we didn't have much trouble finding the direction from hole to hole, so that was nice. Only twice did I need Scott to lead the way after spotting a huge spider web along our path.

And only once did we lose a disc and have to tromp through the woods to find it.





Overall, it was a successful adventure and I'm hoping that the more we have the girls tromping through the woods the more they will be excited about fulfilling my newest dream, travelling the US in our own RV. We'll see...

Family Movie Night

I had a really great childhood. My parents excelled in making memories and giving us opportunities to experience life. We traveled, we played, we saw, we did.

I want my girls to have the same kind of childhood. One they can look back on and think fondly.

One of my memories was our Friday tradition. Along with all other families in the nineties, we enjoyed TGIF as a family. We would often times make homemade pizza or some other kid friendly dinner, followed by having dinner in the living room. That was a rarity.

After watching the shows on TGIF, we would watch a family movie and have a camp out in the living room. It was simple. It was memorable.

The last couple weeks we have tried to implement our version of this memory with family movie night.

The first week we saw the new version of Annie. The girls loved it. Though the lead's straight hair kept Maggie wondering when she would get curly hair like her.They watched the movie in its entirety (though we did skip a slow song or two). Then the rest of the week Maggie sang her version of "It's a Hard Knock Life." And when I asked her to do one thing or another she often times responded with, "I love you Ms. Hannigan." They could be heard playing Annie, arguing over who would be ANnie and who would be Molly. Usually reenacting the same scene over and over.

Now our movie nights are not very fancy. I searched Pinterest for ideas to make our night special. Many were special menus that coincided with the movie, or crafts or decor. There were great ideas, and time consuming costly ideas. We opted for ease and simplicity.

The girls each got a part of our dinner to make themselves (with a bit of help from mommy.) Fruit salad, pepperoni subs and green beans were our menu. The girls did great helping, when they weren't eating all of the ingredients.

Then we started the movie. This week I chose Chitty Chitty Bang Bang from the library. It was interesting for the first hour or so, but I don't remember it being so LONG...or so strange. I'm not sure the girls have enough experience with British accents, so they didn't really seem as into Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as they were in Annie.

Ellie sat still long enough to enjoy our Cinnamon Sugar Popcorn treat, until she realzied she didn't like popcorn. Then she was off and playing in the play room.

Maggie lasted through her entire bowl of popcorn and each were drawn back for each song. We have dance parties whenever music is on.

About an hour and twenty minutes into the movie we realized we still had over an hour to go and decided to call it a night. The girls didn't seem to mind, since they weren't really paying much attention anyway.

I suppose there are certain movies from my childhood that my 4 and 2 year old just aren't ready for. I'm in no rush for them to grow up though, so I'll stick to the animated movies for a bit longer. Then I'll introduce them to the wonderful world of musicals!

Lusk Clan Fourth

I have incredible memories surrounding the Fourth of July.

I grew up an Air Force brat, and besides that the daughter of a singer in the Air Force Band. Needless to say, every Fourth of July we found ourselves at one concert or festival or another. It was a blast.

I remember games, and food, running around, sparklers and great concerts with my dad as the leading man.

 My dad was a great entertainer, and even now I don't really enjoying going to concerts because no one is quite like him. One thing I don't remember about the over populated 4th of July shin digs we went to was the traffic. Maybe I was asleep by the time we left the parking lot, but as an adult I loathe the idea of sitting through fireworks and waiting with 17,000 other cars to get out on the same one lane road.

Seems like the next thing I should say about the holiday is Bah, Humbug! (Can you say that about anything other than Christmas?)

Despite my disposition we decided we would suck it out and let our girls experience the whole kit and kaboodle of fireworks amazingness. I prepared myself for the event all day.

We spent the morning cleaning house, very patriotic I know. The girls were rewarded with their hard work (Read: Staying out of our way as we cleaned) by a session in our sprinkler and improptu sandbox turned swimming pool. The weather was really nice, not hot at all, meaning water games caused some shivering and teeth chattering.

Despite the temperature the girls had fun running wild. After a nap we headed off to the local park to enjoy the festivities.

My parents had rented a booth to sell their donuts and drinks to attendees, so we sat with them and had a yummy picnic dinner.

The girls were eager to play on the inflatables. The moon bounce was first.

Maggie loved it, Ellie not so much. She couldn't quite figure out how to get up with all the jumping going on around her, so she exited pretty quickly.

There were a couple of tall slides, and a couple of obstacle courses to play in as well. I wasn't sure Ellie was going to be able to participate in either of these being so little.

Silly me, I tend to underestimate that kid more than I should.

She had help the first time up, but did it all on her own the fifteen or so times after.

Maggie loved doing the obstacle course, and after only one time of waiting for her sister, Ellie wanted a chance too. Again, she excelled.

Having exhausted all of the sights offered at the festival we found ourselves with at least two hours until fireworks would commence. Being thoroughly uninterested in the traffic or wrangling my kids and wasting time we bribed them with ice cream to leave the park early, without watching fireworks.

They weren't too upset.

What's a family outing without silly family selfies?

Much to Maggie's delight the ride home we saw several fireworks and even from our drive way were able to see several shot off. Thankfully, that was all the fireworks she needed.

I know I'm going to have to suck it up one of these days and let them experience the whole Fourth of July thing in all its glory...but being in bed at 11:00 and not in a grid iron parking lot is quite nice.