#30

Now, you've seen this in the movies plenty of times, and never does it show them struggling to make it visible, or running over their carving multiple times. But guess what, that's not reality.  Because it is EXTREMELY difficult to make a carving legible and it took us a good 45 minutes of painstaking widdling.

Our first step was to find a tree.  Obviously they are everywhere, but we wanted one we could come back to and remember when we pass it, so we targeted our friend Lisa's yard.  We hoped it would be a surprise attack, but it was ruined when she spotted us out her kitchen window doing something mysterious to her tree.  She brought her precious baby girl out to see what we were up to, and found us mid-name.  She just laughed at our struggles and watched us as we switched off between being the carver and the killer of the giant attacking ants.  As cheesy as it seems, it brought a feeling of great accomplishment.

#21

Sand sledding:  you've never heard of it?  That's because we made it up.  You don't think it would work?  Think again.  When the conditions are just right and you have conquered the learning curve, flying down sand dunes on a sled is a complete reality.

It was a stormy day at the Indiana Dunes.  Sirens had gone off just an hour earlier.  People were still hiding in the bathhouse to escape the terror of the wind and rain.  We decided that the worst of the storm had passed and that we could handle pretty much anything else it had for us, so we set off on a hike...uphill both ways. No literally.  We chose a spot...took a dive...and flew off the end of the sled.  Face plant.  So we went again...chose a new spot...took a dive...and flew off the end of the sled.  Somersaults.  We finally found the perfect spot:  the sand slicked down from the rain, guarded from foot traffic by the nearby prickly dune grass.  So we took another dive.  Success.  It felt like real life sledding (except for the dune grass scuffing up our knuckles and legs).

So we left the hill champions, with sand covering our sweatshirts, down our shorts, and in our hair.  And we loved every minute of it.

#16

To start with, check out our URL. beckyallie.  In general, wherever you see one of us, the other is probably not far.  Some might say we are "attached at the hip." So it makes sense that when some of our kiddos favoritos were toddlers, they didn't know the difference between the two of us. They began calling us both beckyallie. And it stuck.  Now we even reference ourselves as beckyallie.

We knew we wanted to have a place to document all the crazy things we did this summer: the things on the list, as well as the crazy spontaneous things. We have a list of 40 summer activities so we never sit at home wondering what to do. When we get bored, we'll pull out the list.

And so begins...the adventures of beckyallie.