Busy Building a Village

Hello, out there in blogland!  I haven't updated the blog in 2.5 months.  And I don't feel even a tiny bit guilty about this.  I've been busy!  I've been busy getting settled back here in Oklahoma.  I've been busy shopping and making and listing and selling for my Etsy shops.  There was October curb shopping (though somewhat toned down), which has so far resulted in a gross profit of $200, a toddler slide and Harry Potter books for my friends, and a backup digital camera for myself.  (Seriously, people -- I love free things, but the Goodwill truck will pick up if you just call them!)

 [And of course, return of the Commode!]

And I've been busy trying to build my mom village.  It took me 3 years to figure out that moms of tiny people must have a village.  You must have someone who will help you when they can, no questions asked.  Some women are blessed with family who can fill this role.  I am not.  (Between my parents living out of state, and my husband's family having a major health crisis, it just wasn't happening.)  I didn't know how much help I needed when Lucy was young.  The answer was "a lot", and I didn't get most of it.  Some of that was my fault.  Now that Lucy is 3.5, way more chill, and solidly preschool-aged, I feel like I have the time and the energy (and just the general sense of awareness) to help others.  So I've been working on becoming better friends with some like-minded moms-of-young-ones that I know.  I mean, beyond helping with physical needs, we just need people to talk to, don't we?  People who won't judge, people we can be open and honest with.  If I need it, then I know others need it, too.

[Gratuitous pumpkin patch photo!]

Turns out I'm still not awesome at it.  I pretty much suck at staying friends with people I don't see all the time.  I'm an introvert, and I've never made myself practice.  So, to the moms in my self-constructed village -- Sorry! I'm trying.  And to anyone who doesn't have a village -- It's probably because you're too busy changing diapers, feeding, and trying to find time to fit in enough sleep.  That's why the rest of us need to pick up the slack.  I want to be the slack-picker-upper.  I think that's one of my divinely-appointed jobs right now.

And also keeping my house in order, feeding myself and my family good food, playing with my daughter, and running two Etsy shops.  But now that my daughter mostly takes care of her own bodily functions, gets her own snacks, entertains herself, and usually sleeps all night, that is seeming a lot more doable.

[Oh yeah, and half of my hair is blue now. ::maniacal laugh::]

School Accomplishments

This is about to get really real, y'all.  Serious blog post with sprinklings of embarrassing facts about me ahead.

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It's Back to School time.  I just moved.  I just read this blog post.  These events have converged and resulted in my thinking about what I accomplished in school.  I spent 17 years in school.  I attended public school, a Catholic prep school, an evangelical Christian school, homeschool, and a public university.  I've pretty much done it all.  I was very good at school.  Straight As.  Total number of classes in which I received a B: 4.  Ever.  I got great standardized test scores, I was a National Merit Scholar, I'm in Phi Beta Kappa.

True story: I got really into DC Talk's album Free At Last when I was in 6th grade.  There's a song on it called "Time Is...".  One of the lines goes, "Get busy like a schoolboy makin' an A / 'cause time, my brother, is tickin' away."  I was truly, deeply perplexed by this as a sixth grader.  In my experience, those who made As where those who did not have to do any hard work, while those who worked hard did so in order to receive Bs or Cs.  Honest mistake.

When I look back on my school career, there are very few things I am truly proud of.  And thanks to some gentle encouragement from that blog post, I decided to take those things out of the box I had stored them in and display them on my wall.  As I was putting them up, I realized that it's not just that these are the kinds of school projects that can be displayed on a wall, but that they are nearly the only things I did for school that I still consider worth displaying, sharing, or looking at.

Here they are.

Embroidered Scarlet Letter

The story: I had an English teacher for a year and a half in high school who came up with some pretty interesting projects to require of us.  Each year she had us write a short story (both of mine involved portals), she had us write poems (I still have both of mine, though they aren't very good), and she had us do artistic projects, like this one and the next one. 

After we read The Scarlet Letter, we had to pick one of four artistic projects to complete, and one was to create your own embroidered "A".  I chose this, as did my friend who I was in the process of "breaking up" with.  I was determined that my letter would beat the snot out of her letter.  There's metallic thread in mine, y'all. Metallic thread.  Well, mine definitely did beat the snot out of hers.  Because hers looked like she didn't even try.  It was approximately as satisfying as beating a 4-year-old at checkers.  At which point I realized that it shouldn't be about her.  I love my letter.  It's beautiful, and I spent hours working on it to make it just right.  I had hardly ever put that much effort into a school project.  Since then it has come to mean even more to me, as I often find myself identifying with and empathizing with Hester Prynne.

 Thoreau quote collages

The story: This was another assignment by the same English teacher.  We were to create illustrations of two Henry David Thoreau quotes.  I took that opportunity to rifle through my craft supply box, and also include my own inside joke.  (The faces of the two sirens are the faces of Brian the Backstreet Boy's wife, and David Duchovny's wife Tea Leoni.) (It was an angsty, jealous time, okay?)  At the time these assignments were assigned, I thought they were a good idea.  Because they gave the artistic, non-academically-minded students a chances to be good at school.  Even as I had so much fun completing them, I didn't realize that I was one of those students.  I got to be good at school.  Not sufficient.  Not checking off a box.  Not skating through.  Good.  Engaged.  Passionate.  Thank you, Mrs. Olson.

Ballet shoes (and a photo of Julie Newmar)

The story:  I went to college on a full scholarship.  I took that opportunity to take whichever classes I wanted (Guitar), especially since I came in with 24 hours worth of credit from AP tests.  By senior year, it was time to buckle down and finish the Honors portion of my degree.  I was in the Honors College, I had taken Honors classes.  My parents wanted me to finish it.  But schedules were such that I needed to choose -- finish my Honors degree, or take Ballet (and Creek [the Native American language]).  I picked the crazy classes.

Ballet was hard.  Really hard.  It took a lot to swallow my pride and wear that leotard in front of 12 other people three days a week.  I was so bad.  So bad.  I know this because halfway through the semester, our teacher filmed our class and then made us watch it.  So, so bad.  I taped the photo of Julie Newmar up in my changing room locker to inspire me.  She is so graceful, so provocative, so female.  She got me through that class.  (Ballet was one of my Bs.  I didn't study for the vocab tests.)


I can only think of two other projects from school that still make me smile to think of them.  One is my senior thesis ("capstone").  I was so done with college.  It was becoming clear that I had zero professional ambition.  I had to write a capstone in order to graduate.  I had started watching The Monkees, and quickly became obsessed.  I watched all the episodes and bought a bunch of their music. And by golly, I turned that ridiculousness into a proper paper.  I wrote on American slang in the 1960s and looked at why some slang sticks around in a language, and why some disappears just as quickly as it appeared.  (You can read it here if you want.)

The other was... Oh, how to explain?  Let's start with Embarrassing Fact Number One about me: In high school for about 2 years I was obsessed with the Backstreet Boys.  I went to two concerts.  It was serious.  Now I don't know if you remember the late 90s, but at that time there were two rival boy bands -- the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC.  I loved the Backstreet Boys.  My good friend since elementary school loved NSYNC.  Well, we were in speech class together, and it was time to give a persuasive speech.  We drew names for the order in which we would present before we started working on the assignment.  I was to go directly before my friend.  We decided that our speeches should be on the same theme: My Boy Band Is The Best.  We even traded teenie bopper magazine photos so we would both have good visual aids.  It was so silly and so fun.  Perhaps the best part was our evaluations:

["Great enthusiasm! Really drew me in" "Good eye contact" "Very well thought out and strong outline" "Great visuals and strong conclusion; kept everyone interested"  God bless you, Nate Madden.]

That's right, our speech teacher totally played along and decided to grade us on skills rather than content.  Thank goodness.


Those are my accomplishments. And now, finally, six years after I graduated college, my school stress freak-out dreams have transformed into dreams in which I find myself at a school, expected to attend and take classes.  I look around, and invariably say something to the effect of, "Screw this! I'm leaving. I don't have to be here." It's about time.

Featured...

This very blog was recently featured over at Pocket Change, a cool shopping blog.  You can see the post here.  I'm pretty excited, because they found me and asked if they could feature me.  Fun stuff!

[Bonus! Photo of my daughter sitting in her "Big Bird Nest". Just happens to be both the first and last time she'll have done that. Ahem.]

Dear Arcata

This week I'm leaving you. It's not you, it's me. Actually it's my husband. No, actually it's God.  I knew I couldn't stay here when I showed up.  I'm sad, but not disappointed.

Arcata, I'm writing to say thank you.  Thank you for one year's vacation.  Thank you for giving me the gift of knowing myself better.  Thank you for space to breathe.  Thank you for convincing me to finally get those red streaks in my hair.  When I get back to Oklahoma there will be teal, or maybe purple.  So people will know I'm yours.

And I am.  I fit in here.  It's so ethereal and mostly indescribable, but I've never felt more at home.  Everyone seems to think the way I do.  Or when they don't, it's okay.  A Rent lyric sums it up best: "To being an 'us' for once, instead of a 'them'!"

The fact that I came here, "found my geographical bliss" (to quote my father), and am now being boomeranged back to where I came from sounds pretty unfair from the outside, I guess.  But it doesn't feel that way to me.  There's an important feeling that I want to remember -- The way I feel in Oklahoma is the way we should all feel here on earth.  It's not the place I'm supposed to be, and now I know that there is somewhere better.  The Promised Land is waiting for me.  But first I have to go through the desert.  (Arcata, in this metaphor you are Canaan.)

An apt metaphor, I think, considering your amazing beauty and fertility.  Here nothing struggles to survive.  Everything just grows.  The trees are enormous, the plants are colorful.  Even the bugs are totally chill.  And most importantly, the sun is our friend, not our enemy. 

But I'll be on the lookout for you, Arcata.  And whenever I find your spirit in Oklahoma, I'll stick close.  And when I don't find it, I'll remember you.  I'll remember how I felt every time I saw hitchhikers on the Plaza, or a young woman riding her bike in a skirt with her yoga mat strapped across her back. The way I felt the first time I heard a Christian over the age of 50 make a joke at the expense of the Republican Party.  How amused I was when I realized that my city-issued recycling trash can is 5 times larger than my city-issued garbage trash can.  The generous and nomadic spirit embodied in the numerous front yard "free piles" that pop up every week.

Maybe someday I'll be back. You are where old hippies go to die, after all.

Peace,
Jessie

Vacation 2012: Twin Peaks

This will be a non-chronological account of the highlights of our recent Northwestern road trip.
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We decided that the best possible use of time in the Seattle metro area would be to visit the cafe where they filmed Twin Peaks. (Which is a TV show from the early '90s. And also a weird movie.) 

So after we waited two and a half hours in the line of cars to get out of Canada (long weekend for the Canadians), we got to keep driving!  And then we were coming up on the Seattle area and the traffic was getting pretty bad, so I looked at the atlas and found a back road to take.  This turned out to be quite serendipitous, as this route also took us past the waterfall and hotel that were also featured on the show!

[Snoqualmie Falls]

That was definitely worth the half hour it took us to park, get out of the car, look at the falls, and browse the gift shop.  It was strangely thrilling.  My guess is that it was the combination of us having car-cabin-fever, the unexpectedness of stumbling across it, and of course the nerd factor.

[My hair decided that it was also very excited.]

Then we kept driving (I'm sensing a theme...) and finally found the cafe!  Twede's, as it is now known.  Now, unlike the Ovaltine Cafe (from the last post), Twede's looks almost nothing like it did in the show on the inside.  This is because the interior was destroyed in a fire (arson, for pity's sake) in 2000.  The sign survived, however, and they rebuilt. 

The other difference between the Ovaltine Cafe and Twede's is that the people in charge of Twede's know the score!  They sell mugs, t-shirts, magnets, frisbees, and even hand-drawn maps of Twin Peaks filming locations.  They've got a "Twin Peaks" burger on the menu, and they always have plenty of coffee and cherry pie.  So that made it pretty fun.  (Also, the food was really good!)

 

All along the back wall by the restrooms, they have a bunch of newspaper clippings about filming and the fire, and quite a few shots from the show.

[Oh, Audrey Horne.]

[Best in the tri-counties.]

I would have insisted that we go find the sheriff station from the show, but it was getting late, and we still had to drive to Portland!

[And there was the part where I convinced Norman to talk to Diane on the voice recorder while I took videos. Oh yes he did.]

Vacation 2012: X-Files

This will be a non-chronological account of the highlights of our recent Northwestern road trip.
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And by "X-Files", I mean X-Files filming locations in Vancouver, British Columbia.  This was the whole point of our trip, actually. Well, not the X-Files part, but the Vancouver part, certainly.  I visited about 11 years ago to see a college I wanted to attend (didn't work out; God is good), and I've been wanting to get back ever since. Well since we live about 12 hours away by car, uh, yeah, we had to go before we move back to the middle of the country.

We did a bunch in our three days, four nights, but as the title suggests, I'm just going to focus on the X-File-y stuff. Because this is my blog and I do what I want.

Now, even though I was completely geeking out, there were still some limits to the nerdiness. 1.) Three-year-old in tow, which meant we tried not to plan too many things for one day, and we needed to be home in time for dinner. 2.) Husband in tow, which meant that attractions had to be independently interesting, aside from the fact that the X-Files was filmed there.

The first day we focused on Stanley Park and the Vancouver Aquarium.

Independently cool factors: Dolphins, penguins, narwhal statue, hummus and veggies lunch plate, and kids' play area.

 

X-Files cool factor: Scene from first season episode "E.B.E." with Deep Throat and Mulder was filmed in front of the shark tank.

[That's David Duchovny, I promise.]

Day Two, Grouse Mountain.

Independently cool factors: a beautiful view of beautiful scenery, fun skyride, birds of prey exhibit, grizzly bear habitat, family-friendly yet innuendo-filled lumberjack show, and POUTINE!
(You may also recognize it as NBC's broadcast "studio" for the 2010 Winter Olympics.)

 

 

[Canada food]

X-Files cool factor: Season two episode "Ascension" filmed on the skyride gondolas.

On Day Three, we took a walking (and walking, and walking, and huffing, and puffing) tour around downtown to see a couple different sights, including...

Robson Square

 

X-Files cool factor: More than one episode was filmed here, but the Lone Gunmen ice skated on the ice rink!

[Promo photo, not a screen capture. Unfortunately.]

Vancouver Art Gallery

 

X-Files cool factor: Used as the exterior for a university library in the episode "Synchrony" (which is a pretty decent stand-alone hour of sci-fi television).

Ovaltine Cafe

Independently cool factors: Really old, really crappy, really cheap cruddy old diner smack dab in the emphatically worst part of Vancouver (and probably the whole of British Columbia).

 

X-Files cool factor: Several scenes from "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" were filmed here.  "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" is hysterical.  It's really, really funny.  That may or may not hold true if you've never watched an episode of the X-Files.

Other fandoms cool factor: Episodes of Fringe and Da Vinci's Inquest, and scenes from the movies I, Robot and The Butterfly Effect.

Actually, the Ovaltine Cafe was one of the places I managed to talk my parents into hitting up when we went for that college visit.

[17-year-old me]

The place hasn't changed in at least the last 16 years (since the X-Files was filmed there).  Pretty sure it's looked exactly the same, and perhaps has been using the same plates since it opened in... whenever long time ago.

[27-year-old me and progeny]

And yes, we ate there. Ick.

[Supernaturally fluffy pancakes. There has to be a scientific explanation for this.]

And the whole thing was fun and special, and the realization of a long-time dream, one I thought I had laid to rest when I watched the 2010 Winter Olympics from my couch instead of in real life like 18-year-old me had been planning.

Vacation 2012: Portland

This will be a non-chronological account of the highlights of our recent Northwestern road trip.
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Portland!  As some sort of hipster, Norman certainly needed to visit.  It was lovely, though we didn't spend much time there.  We visited two main attractions: IKEA and SCRAP.  Yes, both of these places are spelled with all caps.  That's because they are both so exciting.

We decided to visit the IKEA because 1.) I'd never been to an IKEA and by all accounts it's a wonderland of fabulousness, and 2.) The Portland IKEA has a fabric-by-the-yard section, which is apparently uncommon.

 [It was even cloudy!]

It pretty much fulfilled all of my wildest expectations.  Beautiful showroom (including at least three displays of full apartments under 900 sq. ft.) (I have a slight obsession with tiny spaces, even though I could never live in one), cheap products that offer clever solutions to household organization problems, and cheap, interesting food.  On Facebook I called it an amusement park for grownups, which I guess isn't quite right because grownups like actual amusement parks.  Maybe it's an amusement park for the Pinterest set.  Which I am kind of a part of even though I don't have a Pinterest account.

[Spinach and cheese crepes (meh), fried chicken BBQ wrap (yum), IKEA chocolate bars (yes, please!)]

I bought a set of dish cloths, a set of washcloths with little loops on the corners for hanging, two down/feather pillows, and two sets of these shelves/drawers for my craft room.  Unfortunately they have to stay in their packages until after we move.  Sad.

Then we headed on over to SCRAP.  Lucy fell asleep, which meant I got to go in by myself!  It was like a vacation from my vacation!

SCRAP is a magical place.  It looks like this.  They sell recycled craft supplies.  Some of which are actual craft supplies, and some of which are just other recycled things.

I bought a ton of stuff (including a stack of interesting paper for making journals, a bunch of film reels, and about 50 very large manila envelopes for $2), and spent less than $14.

(There are other places like this SCRAP around the country and the world.  Check out this directory.)

[Aaaand that's an industrial laundry hamper FULL of zippers. 25 cents a piece!]

So even though we didn't spend much time in Portland, and we didn't really hit any tourist spots, it was a ton of fun!

Jessie Lyman's Journals, Part 23 (the last)

I previously introduced you to my great-great grandmother, Jessie Lyman Eckert.  You can read the first post here, and subsequent post are filed under

Jessie Lyman was born January 2, 1878.  She graduated from Westport High School (Westport, MO, now part of Kansas City) in 1897 at the head of her class.  From what I have read of her diaries so far, it appears she went on to teach school for a couple years one year in Columbia, MO.  She married Herman Eckert in June of 1899.  On July 26, 1900, she died giving birth to twins Conrad and Cornelia at the age of 22.  Conrad is my mother's mother's father. 
 

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Sat, Mar. 26.

I went to town today and sent Forest some money.
This afternoon we baked. We made three cakes. It rained so that no one could come. I was so tired that I was almost sick.

Sun, Mar. 27.

I didn't go to church this morning, but went this evening. Herman came in after church.

Mon, Mar. 28.

We washed today. I went to school in the morning.

Tues, Mar. 29.

We finished the ironing this afternoon.
Herman spent the evening with me.

Wed, Mar. 30.

Ella went to prayer meeting with Mr. Rodert. I stayed at home and studied.

Thurs, Mar. 31.

We are sewing. Ella is making a dress skirt for herself.

Fri, Apr. 1.

I went down town and interviewed Mr. Allen about my getting a school in Westport.
Papa got me a percal [sic] dress.

Sat, Apr. 2.

We sewed all day. I washed my hair in the afternoon, and took cold.
I didn't get to go to the business meeting this evening.
Emma went to the door to meet Herman, when I was out in the kitchen. I didn't get to say half a dozen words to him. It was so late when they got home, that he didn't come in.

Sun, Apr. 3.

I didn't go to church today. My cold is worse. I [sic] has rained all day. I wrote to Laura H. Herman is coming tonight. I'm afraid it will be to [sic] muddy and damp for me to go out with my cold.

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Haha! What an ending! Like a TV show that got cancelled in the middle of the season.

What happens after this?  Well, in June of 1899 (over a year from the end of the journal!), Herman and Jessie got married at Jessie's family's home.  A little over a year after that, on July 26, 1900, Jessie died giving birth to her twins Conrad and Cornelia.  (Conrad was named after Herman's father; Cornelia after Jessie's mother.)  Conrad and Cornelia's stories are told in part here.

I borrowed Cornelia's travel journals from another family member and scanned them.  I will share some of them here shortly.

Lego Emergency!

I promised you one more busy bag-like project.  And here it is!

I was cruising Pinterest, looking for any packing/moving/road trip with kids tips I hadn't seen before, and lo and behold, this is the only thing I came up with.  Wow. 

But it is awesome!  I thought I was done making stuff, but I had to jump up and make one of these immediately (instead of washing the dishes like I really should have been doing). 

The idea comes from here.  They call it a "mini lego playset", but come on now.  That really doesn't do it justice.  So I'm going to call it a "Lego Emergency!"  (With the exclamation point. I'm taking my cues from the Oklahoma state legislature.)

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Side story: Last year when we were moving, 'round about the third day of driving, Lucy was whining from the back seat that she was sooo hungry, even though we'd just eaten not that long ago.  She said she wanted some peanut butter.  She was being so dramatic about it that we asked her if she was having a peanut butter emergency.  Then somehow that turned into a kid's show theme song called "Peanut Butter Emergency Robot!" Don't think about it too hard. Road trip logic. So now we call the snack known to most people as "peanut butter and crackers" a "peanut butter emergency."
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Anyway, I made one and it looks like this.

 [I used a Sucrets box instead of an Altoids tin.]

I had a small stash of boring Legos that I had found in a dumpster.  I was saving them for crafting, but I never craft with them. Except for right now.  Then I asked Norman if I could raid his stash from when he was a kid for some more interesting pieces (minifigs, steering wheels, etc, etc). 

I glued the flat pieces to the top using E-6000 as the link suggests. It seems like it's going to hold really well!

I think I'll save this one for my purse for special circumstances (restaurants, weddings, etc).

[Rubber band so I don't have a real Lego Emergency all over my purse.]

Busy Bags: Miscellany

This summer to coincide with our (definitely one, possibly two) epic road trip(s), I am making busy bags for Lucy.  See the others by clicking here.
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The following are not proper busy bags, and they didn't take that much effort to make (or I didn't actually make them at all), so I thought I'd lump them all into one post.  The Post of Other Stuff to Keep Lucy Busy in a Car.

1.) Marble maze.  I found this idea through Pinterest along with the others.  Here is a link.

There's a marble in there.  The object is to moosh it around the seam lines from one side to the other.  Kinda fun.  Actually it sounds really fun for a really tired person.

Amazingly enough, I did not have a marble in my stash.  I am still slightly flabbergasted by this fact.  Nor could I find any whilst out at thrift stores and garage sales.  I couldn't even find a game of Chinese checkers with real marbles.  Nor did I have any large, round beads!  It was crazy.  So the thing that's in there is actually a round plastic pearl button with the loop broken off.  It works, but it would be better with something weightier, I think.  (On the plus side, if I ever find a marble, it will be easy enough to rip out part of the seam and replace it.)

2.) Notebook, markers, and stickers.

Lucy is, of course, enamored with little spiral-bound notebooks that flip open (like the ones on Blue's Clues).  She's gone through two from Target, and she picked out a new one at the Dollar Tree for our trips.  (The new one has Mr. Potato Head on it. ::shrug::) So I'll put that, some new markers, and a bunch of stickers in another pencil pouch.

The stickers are from my own stash.  I used to collect stickers in high school (but not in one of those little books -- on their sheets).  I'm soooooooooo glad I saved them all.  They're like magic.  Anytime I need to pacify Lucy, I just pull out another sheet of stickers.  And I have hundreds of sheets.  I always bring a new sheet when we eat out at a restaurant.  For the trips, I'm thinking I probably shouldn't put all the sheets in the pencil pouch at once, given her penchant for pulling all the stickers off the sheet and sticking them in a pile on one piece of paper.  She enjoys this, but it means she goes through stickers really fast.  I think I'll hold back a stash for emergencies.

3.) Digital voice recorder.  (Kinda like this.)

I found this in a free pile in our neighborhood the other day.  It's just a little, beat-up voice recorder.  All it needed was 2 AAA batteries, and it works great!  I was so glad to find it, as I was reminiscing recently about my tape recorder I had when I was little.  Hours of fun!  Lucy already knows how to operate it, and she thinks it's hysterical.  So that's definitely going in the car!

4.) Glow sticks.

I brought these the last time we moved, but I was a little unorganized on the Lucy entertainment front, so they didn't really get used.  But if we're out at night, I think these will be fun.

5.) Finger puppets, Jasmine, and Mulan. (Except that it's the Mulan dressed up like Ping, which apparently is pretty rare, and here we are dragging her around the house running her into things. Yep.)

I made her those finger puppets for Easter, and she plays with them some.  But what she really loves are her Jasmine and Mulan action figures that we found in a box of clothes and toys from Freecycle.  Oh my goodness -- she just runs around with them all day having them talk to each other.  So I think I'll stick the finger puppets and the gals in another pencil pouch.

(In other news, based on the search for a photo of the Jasmine figure, it appears that all the figures of Jasmine manufactured after 1992 were not "action figures" so much as they were "stand around and look sassy figures".  Fitting, I suppose.)

6.) Colorforms (essentially).

I found these on Amazon while looking for paper dolls.  Everyone loves Melissa & Doug, right?  Well, they sell these pads of backgrounds and "stickers", which are really just window clings/Colorforms.  There's a set with stuff around the house, and a set with animals and habitats.  Honestly, I bought both because I couldn't get over how fabulous it will be when Lucy decides there should be dinosaurs in the bathtub, or a grandfather clock in the jungle, etc, etc. 

In a moment of brilliant insight, I decided to remove the white from around all the clings before handing them to Lucy in the car.  I had a sudden vision of Lucy whining and screaming from the back seat because she couldn't peel the clings off, and decided to nip that in the bud.

7.) Pipe cleaners.

I just stuffed a bunch of different colored pipe cleaners into -- you guessed it -- a pencil pouch. Who knows what she'll come up with to do with them!

8.) Bubble wands.

These are for the rest stops.  It's a good way to get up and move around at a stop without the hazards of losing a ball or frisbee in traffic.

9.) Travel tray.

And to top it all off, we bought her one of these.  It's soft, so it won't be a crash hazard, it's got little walls to keep the stuff on it, and it has side pockets!  Lucy is so tall and our back seat is situated such that she can put her feet on the seat that her car seat is on, and when she does her knees are up a little bit higher than her lap, so this should work perfectly!  The only complaints from reviewers seemed to be that because the tray is soft, kids can't draw on it.  But that's what the cookie sheet is for!

So there you have it.  Geez, now I feel like I have too much time on my hands or something.

There's one more project coming, but it's not really a proper busy bag. More like an emergency purse toy....


BONUS TIP!
I realized I should add this one, as it's summer movie season.  We realized (quite by accident) that when we take Lucy to the movies, we should bring a sheet of bubble wrap.  It keeps her quiet and occupied, and it can be a nice stress relief if the movie gets a little intense.  And the movies are always so loud that no one notices the popping noise.  I'd bring some on the road trips, but I think we've got plenty going on...