miluki-piluki: "Little Thumbs"

Grab a coffee and put your feet up - we just returned from a week in the woods and have way too many pictures to share. Like we told the creepy guy at the border, we were headed down to the Catskills for "Family Camp" -- that is, 7 days and 7 nights of sharing eating, breathing and playing space with about 20 other families, which included a rather large number of smallish people. Needless to say, the tally of exhaustion-fuelled melt-downs, tantrums and fever-pitch whining was record-high by the end of the week, but at least the children were better behaved than that. All in all, Mudzuks and Vecais rated *Little Thumbs* four thumbs up. (For those faithful blogger readers who are not Latvian, the prospect of spending a week in the woods doing elaborate Christian-Pagan super-etno activities, singing folk songs, organizing scavenger hunts and generally getting no sleep probably does not sound like much of a vacation, but, well, I guess you're not Latvian.)

Camp kicked off good and proper with Pirate Day! Vecais got well into the spirit of things,

while Mudzuks prefered to forge her own treasure from the fat of the craft box

Other activities included things like drawing:

and fishing (kind of).

On Tuesday evening we were consumed by Olympic Fever (ahem, "Free Tibet!") and put our best feet forward. Here's Mamuks setting up the Can Toss (and as you can imagine, Vecais was a *big help* with that one)

And here's Mudzuks with her killer overhand smasher!

Vecais, champion long-jumper:

And the victorious medal-holders. (Yaaayyyy!)

Despite some rainy mid-week weather, we managed to amuse ourselves -- by simply watching it pour...

going on rather wet woods-walks,

chillin',

or (Vecais' fave) - rowdy Latvian folkdancing.

(Warning: Imminent "Teachable Moment.") Then on Thursday afternoon the torrential downpour finally let up and we did this "Eko-Adventure" which began by meeting The Jerk - some loser who knew nothing about environmental issues or endangered animals.

So we got to meet a zebra ...

a bat (cool ears!),

a grizzly bear,

and finally came a lesson delivered from the belly of a whale...

At the end we met that Jerk again and got to teach her a lesson or two, for example...

Conserve Water!

On Thursday night it was "dress up night" complete with a Garden Party. Mamuks of course failed to read the email that requested parents to bring "fancy dress," but Mudzuks begged, borrowed (and no doubt stole) to ensure she was no Cinderella.

Rather more of a Fairy Godmother, actually, as here she is casting a spell on the resident bullfrogs.

And seeing as neither Mudzuks nor K.K. are much ones for large group dance-a-longs, they got up to their own antics on the other side of the pond.

Meanwhile, Vecais (seriously) was spotted raiding some unsuspecting little girl's sparkly hand bag, and came back with a handful of hair elastics. He insisted on using them ALL.

... and he managed to even retain a few until the next morning.

Here are the ladies (complete with tiaras and babies, of course) on a walk in the woods...

And in these next three we get a "Mudzuks' Eye View" of our living quarters and surroundings. That's the photographer herself in the corner of the mirror in the first one,

and this is "Nama Tevs",

and of course the Crown Jewels.

The Lake: We were lucky enough to get invited by a friendly neighbouring Latvian to go swimming in his private lake a few minutes from the camp. Bliss!

(and meanwhile Matiss got to perfect his "running fishing" trick. He caught two fish!)

Carnival: Face-painting, a carnival limousine, kiddie pool fishing and a host of other merriments...

... and sometimes not-so-merriments.

Campfire: That's Papuks a.k.a "Liga" in the pink hair, delighting onlookers with his knock-out performance in the evening's entertainment smash hit, "The Mud Puddle."