Camping

Tyler had a weekend of discovery. He has a new found love of "peen pom" (ping pong) and he played it - with or without a ball - for hours on end. Mosquitos have a new found love of his blood - I knew his cuteness would cause pain someday.

Emma had a weekend of firsts. She had her first kiss - a banana slug - and when I asked her in disgust why she did that, she said, "They told me to." I didn't realize the whole jump off a cliff talk had to come so soon. She also hit someone for the first time this weekend. As we saw her holding a boy in a headlock, pounding him, we screamed and ran to save that poor little boy. She went promptly to bed (though we had to laugh at how silly that boy might feel at being beat by a girl) and we later discovered that snotty kid had punched Tyler. Yeah, I would have pounded the kid too. She also wore her first wetsuit and looked pretty cute if I do say so myself.

Spencer and I had a weekend full of fighting against nature. There is nothing like having raccoons come after you {ok, slight exaggeration} and not leave you alone. There is nothing funnier than watching your husband chase them up tree after tree, then throw {and miss} rocks at them in the pitch black. There is nothing sillier than hearing him making "scary" sounds to try to freak them out. My throat hurts from laughing so hard. We also had bluejays. Oh, did we have bluejays. One even landed on Spencer's head. Every morning at 5 a.m. the other birds would start making crazy noises. Real fun.

Oh, to be the first campers of the season - all alone - in the campground... I think I prefer crowds.

Here is our trip in numbers:

2 - how many banana slugs Emma kissed (ok, she only kissed one and pretended to kiss another).

31 - how many bug bites we had between the four of us. Not too bad...until you realize that Tyler had 19 of them. All on his face.

3,000 - the minimum number of mosquitos we saw

2 (maybe 3?) - raccoons who teased Spencer

3 - nights we we camped. And froze.

89 - rocks thrown into the river.

12 - how many times Spencer took the kids down the river in our raft.

6 - meals I didn't have to cook! Spencer took care of all of it and it was wonderful.

124 - Emails I came home to. Come on people!

76 - new blog posts to read. My google reader is tired. So are my eyes.

134 - pictures I took. About 10 of them are actually good.

6 - loads of laundry, all of which still smells like the campfire.

4 - "cool" rocks that ended up going through the laundry cycle, making lots of noise in the dryer.

11- hours we slept last night, home in our own beds.

Mostly, it was good to get away from our house for a few days and be with some of our best friends. It's all about making memories...gotta keep telling myself that.