Vacation Crafting

We just returned from a nice and relaxing week with our family and friend in Maine. We had no cell phone service or wireless internet where we were doing some glorified camping. We did have lots of fun spending time together on the farm playing funball, cooking mountains of food for the family and friends, traveling down Coos Canyon, and driving 40 minutes to the nearest wal-mart to replace my broken crochet hook :) I didn't spend much time behind the camera, but I did snap some pictures of Natalie riding a "pony" named Dragon.

She was in 7th heaven and has been jabbering away about him ever since. Her Aunt Bri stayed with her the entire pony ride to make sure she wouldn't fall off.

It was gorgeous, and worth the trip. But I was dreading the 9 hours in the car with a 2 year old. Since we were driving through the day and we don't have a portable DVD player, I wrapped up little dollar store "surprises" to keep Natalie occupied when she got cranky. The hit of the ride was a little bag of foam stickers. It kept her occupied for at least 2 hours, she even persisted and continued when it was dark and the road was bumpy. She peeled and stuck the entire bag of "over 100" stickers and placed them on the coloring book surprise that didn't get nearly as much love. This is the result of her efforts:

And, since I can be just as cranky as a 2 year when I'm in the car for 9 hours, I had to bring somthing to occupy myself as well. I settled on crocheting more amigurumi, since I couldn't bring my sewing machine to make diapers and sleepers.

Natalie loves them both, although she misheard me when she asked what the creature on the left was. I distinctly said "hamster" and she distinctly heard "monster." So here is Monster the hamster, and my funkalicious turtle. He turned out a little wonky, but 2 year olds don't really care about that, right?

Sigh, back to real life. I head back to work for the school year on Monday, and I'm trying my best to resist writing about how much I want to stay home with my big girl all year long.