Camping with the Brownies

Well, this past weekend, I accompanied Alice's Brownie troop on a weekend camping trip. It was about 1 1/2 hours from here and we drove there in pouring rain Friday evening. We went to a Girl Scout place that also had a horse facility. We figured, great! Um, yeah... The site we were assigned to (16 8 year old girls, 5 adults) looked like it hadn't been used in years. We got the only site on the place without flush toilets, which ok, outhouses are no biggie...this is camping after all. But the electricity for the stall was out and there were huge cobwebs in the hole. So everyone had to buddy up and hold the stall door open for the other person so they could see. The stalls on the other side of this outhouse had walls of spiderwebs, so we didn't even try to use them. Our shelter, which had a little kitchen area and showers, also had sinks covered with little dead bugs and there was a frog and spider living in the shower. So we adults decided that we'd prefer to remain stinky and grimy for the weekend instead. You can call me a city girl if you like...I don't bathe with wildlife of any kind!

I can tell you that we left the campsite in far better condition than it was left to us, and the leaders wrote up a several paragraphs long, 2 page letter of comments for the site caretakers. We slept in platform tents that had wooden bed frames and mattresses to put our sleeping bags on, which were fine. They kept the rain out and we weren't on the ground in the mud. The girls were all troopers about using the "hole" for doing their business. About the only plus to that outhouse is that it didn't reek like so many outhouses do. Other than that....

The highlight of the weekend was the horses. The girls got to groom and ride horses on the trails. Since they were Brownie level, there was an adult to lead every horse on the trail. I got to lead the horse Alice was riding on. She had an all white one named Merlin, who was a little spunky and didn't like to stay still, but he didn't spook Alice. I soon discovered that I had limited choices on the trail in many places...hmmm, so I step in the mud or do I step in the horse doody? The ground was messy in a lot of places from the rain. Other horses were different shades of brown and one had black & white coloring like a cow. And speaking of the bovine colored horse...now, I generally don't make a point of checking out animal anatomy because I simply don't care, but here was a you can't miss it even if you're not looking! Good night, I now understand the origins of the expression "hung like a horse". I was glad I did not have my camera with me.

Anyway, it was a fun weekend in spite of the rain and the bugs and mud. I am glad to be back home with a real shower and bed, a bug-free kitchen and football on the tv. The troop leaders took a lot of photos, so if I can get them to email me ones that had Alice in them, I'll be able to add some to this post later.

SARA!!!

BIG birthday shoutout today to my sister Sara...


HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!

Fun with Ella

Ok, I meant to post this a few days ago but better late than never. We got to see Sara and Ella briefly a weekend ago. Here are some pictures of Ella playing with some of the toys we still have around.

Birthday greetings heading to Charlottesville

Just giving a HAPPY BIRTHDAY shoutout today to my longtime friend Karen. Have a great day... LYLAS!!!!

So far, so good

The kids have all settled in the new school year and so far, all is well. Matthew is off to a good start in his first taste of high school. An A in math and B in English is a nice change of pace indeed. I warned Matthew that if he kept it up, he might end up on honor roll, and then would he do? Matthew just grinned at that. (if only he was that way at home) He's even made a couple friends at lunch and in class, and his resource teacher is really great. I talked to him for quite a while during open house and he's definitely going to have Matthew's back for the next 4 years. The guy grew up in Ogdensburg, so we got to chat about the north country. Kristen has made a ton of friends since we got here, so she's doing well in the middle school. Alice did have to change schools since our base school was different than when we were in the apartment, but so far, she is doing well and she likes it there. We definitely ended up with a good school situation.

We got to be adults again!

Thanks to St. Maria (my awesome sister)and Robert, Chris and I got to take a weekend trip that didn't involve kids or relatives for the first time ever. Alice called it our honeymoon... :-)(I suppose you could call it that since we chose to buy our first house instead of taking one right after we got married) We drove to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, which was about 3 1/2 hours from home for us. It was really fun. I'd been able to score cheap accomodations so that freed up more money for fun. It was not fancy like the hotel we stayed at in the Chicago area when Diana got married, but the rooms were clean and we slept well, and the beds didn't have coin slots attached to them. :-)

We also scored what for right now, counted as cheap gas.

We ate lunch one of the days at a tavern in the town. The food was pretty good and everyone who works in town, dresses up like the 1700's. It was a fun atmosphere.

I like this photo in particular


It was a cool place and I hadn't been there since I was 8 or 9. There is a lot of history in Virginia and I could very easily become a history junkie. It is a great place to take kids (even though we didn't!) and a great "living" history lesson.

The second day we went into town a while more, then headed to the local winery for a tour. There was a tavern on site so we ate lunch there, then headed in for the tour. It was pretty interesting and we learned some stuff about winemaking. We got to taste 7 different wines (good thing I ate, but even still I was buzzed after the first 6 tastes!). We bought a few bottles to take home with us.

It was a really fun weekend and it let us forget all the trouble at home. I care about Maria too much, so we did opt to return home, :-) but hopefully we won't have to wait another 15 years to get adult time again.