A New Day

Today was a new day with Asher.
Starting fresh. Trying to have a new attitude and new approach. But still with the old frustrations.


But, I did get a piece of encouragement.
One of the parents mentioned that last year their child simply wasn't eating enough "real" food on their assignment and they had to up the protein intake of their kids in order to compensate for it.

For example?
After two boxes of sugar cereal, Asher chases that with pancakes and syrup for breakfast.
At lunch, he ate a quarter of a grilled cheese sandwich, chips, kool-aid and a GIANT cookie.
Snack was a slushie at the snackbar with starburst and m&m's.
For dinner was fajitas, but he ate only a tortilla shell with cheese in it followed with a sopapilla and honey.


Now, I am not normally this out of it when it comes to my kids dietary intake. But there is a lot going on at camp. When this mom mentioned it to me, it was like alarm bells started going on inside my head and all of the sudden I realized that my kid was running off of PURE SUGAR.

He was sugaring up and crashing. Sugaring up and crashing. Then running off of adrenaline and excitement. Then he was just tired and wired. Then I just wanted to wring his neck.

So today, we changed course and added some serious protein to the diet and I think I saw some light at the end of the tunnel. Of course, this could all come crashing down tomorrow. But, I am so hopeful that if we regulate protein and make sure that we limit his carbs and sugar that he can chill a little bit more.



We can hope right?
Until then, there's always Lucy.

Losing My Mind

I am going to use this blog for a dose of parenting honesty tonight.

I just had a major blow-up with Asher and then of course Matt over how to best parent Asher and I am at my wits end right now.

He is a GREAT little boy. So cute, so fun, so full of life.
But when he just is crazy-it is ALL OUT. There is no reeling him back in. I feel like I am at a complete loss for how to be a mom to him because according to Matt the only thing that makes him respond is a spanking.

Which I don't exactly want to do for multiple reasons but
1) there are are about 450 people around at all times in camp
2) I want him to just listen to me WITHOUT needing to resort to spanking
3) I don't want to do it.

But over the last few months, I have noticed that he just tunes me out. It is like I am yelling at him ALL DAY LONG over the silliest things just to get his attention because he just can not hear me. When I am speaking directly to him, it is like he is looking over my shoulder. Not at my face. Not in my eyes. There seems to be no connection unless there is a threat of really bad things happening to him.

Tonight we had to punish him over the silliest thing and he went beserk. Which Matt came in on and then took over and it made me feel like a incompetent parent.
I just want Asher to listen to me and have fun and want to do the things that I ask him to do.
But instead, I feel like I am constantly giving him a talking to and putting him in timeout.
I am really tired and want to just give up.
It is so hard because I feel like as great as Asher is, he is such a challenge .

Sorry for the rant, but is this what 4-year old boy looks like?
I am beat down right now.

Nap Time

Lucy is running so hard at camp that she is sleeping around 12 hours a day. I had to wake her up from her nap at 5pm so that she would go to sleep last night.

She was so sweet and cuddly.

Yes, her feet are pressing up against the edge of the pack and play. She doesn't mind. And I don't mess with a kid who is sleeping 12 hours a day. Neither should you.

Just try to not kiss this face.

She was not happy about being woken up and threw a fit. So sweet to so SOUR.

Then she just pouted and stared at me for four to six minutes. Seriously.

Nothing like a lollipop to soothe the soul.

Then a rainbow came out and all was right with the world.

There is nothing like starting off the week with a rainbow to make you feel like the week holds a promise for you.

My Muse

Since the weather has been less than ideal (i.e. snowing off and on yesterday) I busted out the camera and the kids hammed it up like crazy for me.
Here is the day in the life of the Sloan's.

First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage

My sweet daughter has a boyfriend.

His name is Colt Wingo. Just kidding its Bjorg. Just kidding its Dietz. Just kidding it is Scott Roades. He is on the far left in this picture AND single!

He is doing program with Matt and Lucy says his name just like that, "ScottRoades!"

The other night, the guys were handing out graduation diplomas for hiking the mountain and it has their picture on it. Scott handed one to Lucy and you would have thought he handed her pure GOLD.

She walked around in heaven for hours. Just staring at the picture. I asked her who was in the picture and she said, "Daddy, Bubba Nubbins and BOYFRIEND."

"Boyfriend?"
"Mmmhmmm. Boyfriend."

Ok.
Now, anytime he comes around; she plays coy and won't even look at him.

But today she did this.

"Where's ScottRoades?"
"I don't know. Why do you need to find him?"

"I want a hug and a kiss."

Homeschooling all of the sudden sounds like an attractive option.

Date Night

This week, I was reading about the Obama's date night in the Big Apple and USA Today published a poll here that said that 36% of moms say that they have a date night with their spouse every seven months. And 18% said every 4-6 months. That's 54% of mom's spend over half a year in their house without a break from their kids with their spouse.

HALF A YEAR.

No doubt the divorce rate in our country is what it is. Not that date is going to solve everything. But it made me really appreciate that effort that Matt makes at creating space for us to go on dates and to get out of our house without our kids.

I would lost my mind if I had to go half a year before leaving my house with my husband for dinner and a movie or even a trip to Lowes.

I'm not hard to please.

How often do you get a date night?

A Million Miles Away

While here at Crooked Creek, we are with musicians Drew and Ellie Holcomb. Let me just tell you that we have been blown away by their talent. TALENT people.

They are LEGIT. Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors have just released a new album called "A Million Miles Away" that is an acoustic album that they recorded because whenever they play YL camps-people hear them playing on just acoustic guitars rather than the "rock stars" that they normally are.

But it is a soulful, amazingly beautiful sound that will add so much to your life to have it playing in your car, at your house and on your ipod. Also, when these people make it big...you can say that you knew about them way back when. Trust me on this; it's gonna happen. Just take a listen to the song, "Mercy" on itunes and then tell yourself that you don't want the whole album. Or "Love Will Bring You Home" or "Hung the Moon" and try to not smile and love your spouse a little bit better or not fall in love all over again.

It's not going to happen.

It will be the best 9.99 that you will have spent on itunes in long time. I promise.
Here is the link to them on itunes:
Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors

Crooked Creek is Saved!

When you live at camp, you live on a camp schedule where every day is in order, Day 1 is when campers arrive. Day 2 and 3 they do other activities but Day 4 is the big one. We pack so much into this day that is fairly unbelievable that high school students survive it, much less my husband and the rest of the staff.

Asher is no dummy-please look how cute Mills Hancock is.
Can you say future rehearsal dinner photo? Yes, we are scheming already.

But for the life of the staff kid, it is like Christmas-come once a week. They get to go to Club, go swimming, eat pizza lunch, the kitchen gets blown up, we all get dressed up, guns get shot four times, there is a fire, Indians in a teepee, fried chicken for dinner, a carnival with cotton candy and popcorn, a full-music and dance show featuring your daddy, then a dance party. After that full day-you fall into bed exhausted at 10:30 at night (which equals 3am in preschooler years).

Lindsay Hancock with her doll baby daughter Mills. Lindsay does in fact want to kill me in the middle of the night for posting this picture. But it is her costume for program. So, you have to see it.

Asher has been asking when he gets to dress up like a cowboy since we left home in Asheville, over a WEEK AGO. And he asked about the carnival no less than 75 times yesterday.

(ever seen a tableau set up on a lake? There's a first time for everything.)

Of course, it poured down raining all afternoon and the show had to go on. So we had tableau set up out there and the poor summer staff and work crew had to be out in it for over an hour just shivering in the rain. But a miracle occurred when campers came out because the weather cleared out and it didn't rain again during the night. AMAZING! It looked like the weather was here to stay.

The kids had a blast and I had so much fun dressing them up-especially giving Lucy little braids. She melted my heart all night long and Asher was hilarious with his two pistols shooting everyone up.


He was the funniest during the Opera. There was a scene where Matt gets fed up and walks out on his partner and Asher was shocked at his dad's "behavior." He looked at me and said "Is daddy not going to be a cowboy anymore?" with so much passion and sadness in his voice. He really gets into it. He was ready to dance when it all turned out all right in the end.



The whole team did an amazing job last night and we are excited to get through the next six days to do it all again!

New Blog to Note

My good friend Lindsay Hancock has started a blog and since her husband is doing the EXACT same thing that my husband is doing right now, except her husband is in fact BUBBA NUBBINS...I thought that you might want to follow along and see our perspectives.

Since we are both behind cameras all the time, the only chances we have to actually be seen, is probably on each other's blogs. Are we nerds or what? We live down the hall from each other, our daughters could be twins, our husbands doing really ridiculous raps about eating nachos at the Honeycomb to Justin Timberlake tunes. What's not to love?

Anywho, it is a great blog already and you will like to see how she updates more often than me since I am getting tired out from all my twittering and whatnot.

Check it out www.hancocksroll.blogspot.com

Also, the Hancocks have the best stories-already they one about a bear in camp that I didn't know about! GO NOW!

Something to Look Forward To

Camp is well under way. Sorry to not have posted yet.
It is always chaotic to get started.

We have kids from all over the US; Texas, Tennessee, Alaska, Montana, Colorado here this week and it is a blast already. When the buses started rolling into camp, there wasn't a dry eye on the property (of adults-work crew and summer staff aren't as in tune with what is going on) I believe that the day that I don't get emotional over seeing kids get off of buses, is the day that we are done with this mission.



The weather has made things hilarious, because really; who doesn't want to do an obstacle course in 30 degree weather through snow melt creeks in the dark? That's high adventure right there.

We are getting ready for more high adventure tomorrow when the high is supposed to be 40 and SNOW SHOWERS in the middle of the swim meet. The pool is heated and all, but really? At least the pictures will be priceless.

Best reaction of the week so far was when the bad guy, "Bubba Nubbins" came on last night and he told Jims and Cole (Matt and Scott) that he scattered the donkey herd...Asher turned to me and said with a LOT of passion, "THAT IS NOT NICE! I'm gonna get my Daddy and we are gonna fix that Bubba Nubbins!"

(I know that nearly NONE of that paragraph makes any sense whatsoever. Just go with it.)

Does it get any cuter? He is ALL MAN CUB is the phrase that is being tossed around camp this week.

And Lucy? Well she is just charming the pants off of everybody by being as cute and sassy as she can be. Here she is on top of a boulders scaring me to death.


I have decided to rename the camp, Rock Death Camp since they just put in about 300 3-foot tall boulders around camp and all my kids want to do is climb them. They look cool and it is an alternative to a playground. No accidents yet!