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!

When Will the "Good Fruit" Get Set?

"You my brothers were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge in the sinful nature, rather serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command, "Love your neighbor as yourself." If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or your will be destroyed by each other.

So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies and the like. I warn you as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other." Galatians 5: 13-26

new blogs of note

Oh yeah, this morning...we had to say goodbye to Ben. He is leaving! MOVING OUT. What? Huh? He is sailing on cross-Atlantic voyage to Spain on a once in a lifetime opportunity and he is leaving. He started a blog at www.blogofthejohnson.blogspot.com and you can read along with him.

We will do an homage post to Ben at a later time, GET READY. But we love what he wrote about us there. It was really sweet and honestly, I don't know what our lives are going to look like without him being there when we get home. woah. Enough. Can't go there yet.

Onto other nonsense,
my husband started a blog too. Yep. I know. What is this world coming to? He is www.mightybignoggin.blogspot.com (seriously. That's the name.)

My Schizo Week of May

Sorry for the lack of posts this week.

I am going to review, not for sympathy but for posterity so that when my children look back and wonder why I have lost my mind; they can point to things like this week and say "Of course! It all makes sense now."

So last Monday night we had the Joe Nichols fundraising concert. And yes he sang, "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off" but we did get to raise some money for Young Life and awareness in the area and it was great fun.

This was after we had removed our kitchen all weekend long. We had to take a few days off you remember to work, the kids went to Jeannies etc. Well on Wednesday, I get the brilliant idea to drive to IKEA, buy the cabinets that I need and then drive to Greenville and pick up the kids. Drive back to Asheville, then Weaverville for a wedding shower. 6 hours in the car on Wednesday. Plus a full day in IKEA. I was wiped out. But I did get to help with some of the renovation stuff that night! See PROOF:

Ben's has more fun than me though.


Thursday, the kids were in school and I had meetings all day, but we had a YL ladies night that night. So I got a much needed pedicure and dinner out with friends while Matt and the other dads had the kids.

Then on Friday morning, I had a meeting at 7:30am for work, came home packed all morning. Loaded up the kids and waiting for Spooner to get off work and then we drove to my parents house in south Georgia to take them my dog, Slappy; for the month. Spooner was a GREAT road trip partner and put up with me, my kids, my dog, my parents and my hilarious family. Highlights from the weekend include her tweeting the minutes on the way home, not trusting the GPS and then LEARNING TO TRUST THE GPS, all the crazy talk about gator attacks and then being told that I worried too much about them, then the two hours of conversation centered around Dr. Bukks teef and the ensuing fambly photo shoot.



One of the things I love about my parents house is there is no shortage of things to photograph. My kids, doodads around the house, the incredible scenery there. I love this picture of Lucy. It makes me remember feeling like trees were enormous. By the way, that is actually an ENORMOUS oak tree. And yes, it was a damp and muggy as the pictures look.










We got there Friday night. Played Saturday. Took off Sunday. Matt worked the whole weekend getting the kitchen totally demolished and cleaned up.


Monday was a holiday but we spent the whole day getting ready to leave for Colorado. Because that is what we were doing on Wednesday. Leaving for Colorado for the month. But we also had a Weaverville Supper Club on Monday night, plus Amy Noll staying with us Monday and Tuesday and on Tuesday I had a HUGE meeting for work. So my stomach was feeling pretty rough and sleep was getting harder and harder to come by.

But we had a wonderful time at the Supper Club since all of our kids love each other like brothers and sisters and everyone played American Idol. Especially Lucy. I just want to squeeze her these days.

On Tuesday it was our 8 year wedding anniversary! Yay! Looks like we made it through the seven-year itch. Shoowee! That was tough.
We went to dinner kind of early because we had so much to do to get ready for Colorado on Wednesday. How early? At the table next to us was a couple celebrating their 67th wedding anniversary and the table behind us their 20th wedding anniversary. Can you say SENIOR DISCOUNT?

But we left dinner and went on a really nice walk and got all caught up and were so excited to leave today to come to Colorado.
We left our house at 6am and got to Crooked Creek at 3pm Colorado time. Long day. But our kids rocked it out. They were amazing.

It is however, 30 degrees here right now and I am having serious misgivings about EVERYTHING that I packed. See that snow on those mountains? That ain't so far away from us. Cute skirts and rainbow flip flops are not going to help me make it through the month. Fleece hats and jeans is more like it.

Get ready to see some pictures of cold high school kids at a pool party next week!