Peace. Love. Dirt.

The girls and I enjoyed another full weekend of music, crafts, games, heat, camping and friends at Live Oak Music Festival near Cachuma Lake.

Somehow this weekend always manages to bring hot weather, plenty of dust and quite a crowd, but it's all worth it. It's not a place to go if you have an aversion to crowds, heat, dust, loud noises, the sound of people partying long into the night, laughter at 4 a.m. But performances continue on any of three stages from 8 a.m. 'til midnight (and beyond if you count the all-night jams going on throughout camp every night); there's a lot for the kids to do; there are music workshops for a variety of instruments; and the company is generally entertaining. And funds raised go to our local public radio station, KCBX.

On our first night in camp, V saw something moving in the dark on the tarp outside our tent. We grabbed flashlights expecting to find a mouse. Instead, we spotted a decent-sized toad which V promptly captured. We listened to it chirp for a couple of minutes, then set it free in a puddle near our camp (possibly the only puddle in the entire campground). The following night, she caught another in the women's community shower, much to the disgust of some of the other moms in the room!

Live Oak is also a time when we relax a lot of our everyday rules. There's no bedtime (who wears a watch?), and we tend to find extra tasty, unusual (for us) snacks like this VERY colorful popsicle V enjoyed.

Both girls spend possibly MORE than their fair share of time in the birdseed box (think sandbox, but filled with birdseed instead of sand), and the crafting area. This year's addition of a wood crafting area was THE hit of the day! You want to entertain a large group of kids? Pick up scraps from the local wood yard, grab some nails and hammers, then let 'em rip. Some kids built chairs and small tables. Others built, well, it was hard to tell, but the builders were thrilled!

Join us in 2009! Live Oak is always Father's Day weekend.