We just got back to Frontenac after our annual trip to Ohio for Family Camp. I'd love to thrill you with a ton of pictures, but my camera ran out of batteries pretty early on and instead of being responsible and changing them, I just picked up any random close-by camera and captured our summer vacation on it. So if you get home from Family Camp and discover some great pictures of my kids on your memory stick, please e-mail them to me!
I did manage to get the camera up and running on the last day. Here is a picture of me and the kids just before we popped into the van to start the trip home. We made it in one day. It took from 9 am to 11:30 pm, but we made it relatively unscathed.
The girls took a moment to get sprinkled by the lawn watering system at a toll-way "oasis where we stopped to get money to pay all those tolls between Gary, Indiana and Rockford, Illinois.
We also stopped at a rest area in Wisconsin to let the girls run around a little bit and get some of the wiggles out. They got to play for about five minutes before it started to rain, so not many wiggles got out. But, I like the way Maggie is pointing her toe in this picture. I don't know what Beatrice is doing.
The trip went down hill from here. It rained torrents for about 30 minutes just after this. Then Obie started coughing and ended up puking on himself. Bee shouted "He's CHOKING!!" which prompted me to cut across two lanes of traffic, slam on my brakes on the shoulder and race around the van to see if he was breathing. He was, but he needed all of his clothes changed. This was followed by him and Bee pretty much screaming for a couple of hours until I finally found a McDonalds with a playland. (And a really rude teenager named Jeffery who couldn't figure out that a mom and three kids ordering Happy Meals at 10 pm don't really care if they get 4 quarters instead of a dollar bill back as change.) But after that all three kids went to sleep and we made it home.
As for Family Camp, this year seemed to fly by. Here are a few things that happened:
- The girls played with their cousins, fed the cows in the barn, did a lot of fishing (My favorite quote for the week was from Beatrice, "Aayden put-ted a worm on my nose!!"), ran all over the farm, and pretty much just stayed out of my hair!
- It rained too much for our tent and it sat empty and waterlogged for most of the week. We slept in the pond house and stayed nice and dry.
- I had a wonderful visit with my "favorite cousin" Neale, met his wife Kiley, and was struck by how awesome it is to love someone simply because they're family. (And Maggie fell in love with their dog, Lucy. I know there are pictures of the two of them on a camera somewhere!)
- Obie took his first three crawl-steps. He also spent every afternoon rocking on the front porch with Aunt Melva. And he generally endeared himself to everyone out there!
- Mr. Silky got to meet the extended family and was a big hit. He was also quite a curiosity to the farm cat, Shadow.
- Beatrice came home with a pet, too. His name is Sparkle Sparkles and he's a blue grasshopper. He likes lettuce. We'll see how long he remains a member of the family!
- I knit a pair of baby socks for my cousin's baby-to-be Harold.
- We ate A LOT of food. We always do.
Family Camp is always a great time because we get to laugh a lot, listen to the same stories over and over - and occasionally hear a new one, and just generally fill up on all of the good vibes that come from being so close for a whole week with the people you're related to. The girls have been asking when we can go back ever since we got in the van to leave!
As you can tell from Bee's face, she just accidentally picked a tomato off of the plant behind her. The cherry ones are just beginning to turn orangey red. Everything else in the garden is green and waiting to be ripe. Hopefully it will all ripen before I have to start covering the garden to ward off the impending frost! This is turning out to be the coldest July on record for Minnesota. Go figure. My garden looks a little bit better than this up close, but you can see that at least the marigolds are going gangbusters! I think that next year we'll double the garden area. And get some sturdier tomato cages.
