More from the featured Artist EG Schantz

Leaf Light

Sunspot

Woodscape

Upsiedown Daisy

Through Eli's Eyes

Wildflower
by EG Schantz

Eli has been bit by the photography bug
and thanks to his classes with the
Summer Art Institute, has begun
to capture his experiences and memories
as he sees them. I'm thankful to be
able to witness his unique perspective on things.
Frankly, I'm impressed. He has an amazing eye
and a love of beautiful light. Below is
the shot from my perspective. His is
ever so much more interesting. He took more
time and more thought with his, I think.
It seems to me that you can tell he considered the
flower, the angles and the shot before he took it.
So cool...


Mother's Wildflower
by J Schantz

Movie Night

Fun Flick...action packed!
We jumped in our seats a lot.
It was way nice to sit in the cool and dark
theater when it was such a scorcher
outside.

Sheesh...will somebody
please tell my hilljack neighbors
that the 4th of July is over...
As I write this they are STILL setting
off fireworks...so retarded...
I REALLY don't like fireworks.
Professional ones at Disney or somewhere
maybe but in your backyard...gimme a break...
Oh, dang...sorry...just fell off my soapbox.
I'm done now.

Go buy your trail shoes, Kristen!

My new book chalk full of spectacular,
hidden, out of the way places to go on
our sister hikes. We're gonna have fun!

Not Killer Tomatoes

Yum! Finally...
No salmonella on these babies...

Lettin' the little guy pick the big tomato...

Eli couldn't stay out of the action. We let Gus pick
because Gus actually eats tomatoes. Eli won't eat em'
but he wouldn't leave us alone to pick em' either.
Here's his...we thought it was funny. Gus grabbed it
wiped the dirt off and ate it right after this shot.

Ladies Luncheon at Stream Cliff Farm

www.streamclifffarm.com

We had a lovely afternoon of "just the girls" on the
ride over to Stream Cliff where we visited the gardens
and little shops before we lunched at their
Twigs and Sprigs Tearoom.
Good Company in a beautiful environment with a rich history.
Morgan's Raiders went through the place during the civil war...neat.

Not so surprisingly, K and I REALLY enjoyed the wine tasting
at their new winery where all of their delightful wines
have names to do with horses or the pastoral life.

Our Favorites...

Pink Pig - A raspberry flavored blush

Painted Pony - A sweet red

Sweet Scarlet - Another sweet red (we love those)

Kentucky Stud - A dryer, bolder red

Spotted Horse - A yummy
riesling used to make a great punch called Toad Stranglers
which we went home and made that night after
helping dad mow his 3+ acres...whew!

If you're checking out wineries in Southern Indiana,
a stop at Stream Cliff is a MUST.

Oh, and wear your Red Hat! They're big
into that society.

Camp Challenge Pics

Well...he's back AND he LOVED it!
The theme of the camp was "Go Green" and
focused on cool science and stewardship of the earth.
He came back exhausted (12pm bedtime every night)
and bug bit (midnight swims and lots of hiking)
raving about finding geodes and eating hobo packets for dinner.
He had a ball! He's just as much in love with
camp as I was at that age. He's trying to get me
to let him go again in August...I'm pushing for next year.

Green Goo

Yummy Hobo Packets!

Archery

Bullseye? Maybe?

Fun Games

Fun Worship

Family Group

Camp Challenge 2008
3rd and 4th Grade Camp

The Clifty Falls Swimmers

While K and I were sweatin' it out on the trails
our sweet little monsters were chillin' in the pool.
We missed most of it but got back in time
to catch these pics.


Shelby Ann...the gymnast cheerleader person and
her amazing dive.

Eli Garrett...the non gymnast way not cheerleader
feller with the funniest of dives.

THANK GOD for the manny!
We've missed our manny so much. He was indispensable
last year at Disney and still steps up to bat whenever
there's a family outing. I actually get to do something besides
kids because they all have great fun with him. Isaac
was his tick basically and kept making everyone take him
down the big slide that any normal three year old would
be deathly afraid of. "Again! Again!" We actually drug
him out of the pool when it closed screaming because he didn't
want to leave. Baby pools are for sissies didn't you know that?

Up the stairs to come down the drenching flume of death.

Uncle E and his muscles making it fun instead of scary.

Isaac's and his BFF

Hansel and Gretel

Clifty Falls State Park this past weekend...Kristen
and I leave the kids and Eric and The Nana at the Pool
and decide to hit some trails for a "short" workout before
we get in the pool with everyone else.
The Hansel and Gretel title to this post is funny cuz as we
were hollerin' at each other up and down the trail
K yells for me to wait up cuz Ansel (Adams) needed to
take a picture. I was far enough away that I thought
she said Hansel and so I start crackin' jokes about bread crumbs
and candy houses which only confused her and made me
laugh harder when I realized what she actually said. This
really didn't help things as I needed to pee at this point
and hysterical hyena-style giggling makes it
harder to not wet yourself.
Anyways, the rest of what follows is also a pretty funny story.

K's in good shape...I'm on my way. I do around 2 miles a day.
We figure we'd hike some little trails for around 40 minutes
and then go swim. I've got my playlists on my little Sansa
coordinated with my workout so that when the music ends
I'm typically done. So, here we land at the first picture.
We'd put in our minutes. My player wasn't only at the end of
one and a half playlists but it also was out of battery.
I should've had a clue right there.

See...isn't it a nice, pretty trail. Classed "easy" according
to the map which we had with us but had not closely read.
From this point, just to the left of the big tree in the
foreground is a steep, several hundred foot drop
down a trail of switchbacks which we were
crazy enough to go down.
(That was the beginning of our hike on the trails
classed um, well "rugged" only we didn't know it yet.)
YES...down we went, thinking we'd
catch another trail further up and be just fine.
We should have looked HARDER at the map.

At the bottom, we were so glad, as we looked and
looked for the Trail 2 marker, that we had made
our way down. It was beautiful. Then, we
discovered that the creek bed was Trail 2.
And it was going to be Trail 2 for awhile.
It was here that we realized that Trail 2
was classed as "rugged". Did I mention that
we are novice hikers?

Rugged-Schmugged...Trail 2...wasn't too bad
and we were feelin' pretty up for it.
So, we decided that we were gonna go for it
and hike the creek bed up to Big Clifty Falls and all
was going well until we realized that we'd already been
gone for about 2 hours and needed to check-in. We
had a cell phone with us but we had no service
way down in the creek bed oh, and I STILL
needed to pee (Oh, shut-up, I didn't want to pee in the woods.
which may have had something to do with the temperature
and the fact that I was drenched with sweat and wearing, snug
exercise pants. I was afraid if I got em' down that they
wouldn't come back up...SHUTUP!).
We hiked faster.


Trail 2


More of beautiful Trail 2


Yep...still Trail 2


Pretty...GLORIOUS...well worth seeing...still friggin' Trail 2
still no service bars on the phone...still need to pee...
K begins hallucinating about seeing water fountains...


After 3 hours, we were out of time and we knew it. We
were also short on water so we pulled out approximately
1 mile short of our goal so that we could high-tail it back
to The Nana who we were increasingly worried would
be madder than a wet hen because we'd been gone a tad
longer than we had anticipated. We could have taken Trail 4
up, I suppose, but I think we passed it before we had decided to
head back so we came up on Trail 5. On Trail 5, the cardio
was intense enough as we headed up that we both decided that
we HATED hiking and took turns swearing at the dirt inches
from our faces as we clawed our way back up another set
of switchbacks. We SO get the "rugged" classification now.
I STILL needed to pee. There are pictures of all of this
but there is also a sacred sisterly pact, serious enough
but minus the blood, that no one will ever see those.
The next picture does NOT do justice to the climb out.
We were thankful that we hadn't taken any of the kids as we would
have had to kill and eat them somewhere down in the creek bed.
We'd would have never gotten them back up the hill.


At last but...we were mad. We wanted to go all the way up
to the big falls. K continued seeing water fountains where there
weren't any...we were out of water or just about. I guess
she was thirsty...Whose ever heard of mirages in the forest.
I was wishing desperately for a port-o-potty
cuz I STILL needed to pee but I wasn't seeing
them in the trees. SO FUNNY...
So, we get up and out and on the road and call to check in
which only succeeded in scaring the hell out of them because
the reception was still bad and they couldn't hear us.
We knew it was gonna take another good bit to get back to them
and wanted them to know. After the call, I think they were convinced
that we were lost and dying. Anyways, we found water and a
shortcut back to the pool which, no shi#@ing, came out
exactly as depicted below. We popped out of a rabbit hole
not only at the edge of the stinkin' pool but also right behind
where THE NANA, who was doing this weird mad praying thing
that she does when we're in trouble, was tanning in her cute black suit.


The end of our adventure...

Here's what we first laid eyes on. Yep...that's her
in the little black suit and her hat...her hands are either
on her hips or headed that way...she's yelling for us to cut
our own switches as we come...oh, and I'm so not joking
about that...

There was a blessed potty in that pool house...ahhhh.

All's well that ends well, right...we'll be better prepared
next time. I'm trying to talk K into our next excellent
adventure as we speak.

After Soccer - The Pool Party

Brrrr...momma, it's cold.

Okay...maybe I can put my feet in.

Oh, yeah...I got in. It's my birthday.
Oh, yeah...I'm big stuff.
(He was actually singing something to that affect.)

Baby Blues on Blue...gorgeous...


That big, fat sun is in my eyes.


Freddie the Fish

Cute...Patoot. I bought that bikini
thank-you-very-much. Isn't she a cutie!

Loungin' by the pool.

Frankie and Annette
(If you don't know Frankie and Annette then
I'm not even gonna bother...)


At Last!


Goggle Girl


My mermaid


Huddled for warmth with the big cuz who visited from the
big pool after playing with the big boys.

HA! Got him! Dang kid duckin' pictures all the time.