Vacation Is Over

Well, vacation is now officially over, but the day was a good one. We got up and had a great breakfast of bacon, eggs and hash browns. We had some time to chill out after breakfast because, surprise, it rained!

Thankfully it rained a while but began to clear up as we cleaned up inside the trailer. When we were ready to hook up the camper and head out, it was all blue skies. We were able to get home, get the camper unpacked and cleaned out before it rained again.

I guess the one word that would best summarize this year's family vacation is...RAIN. But we are thankful to have had the camper. We did not get to be outside as much as we would have liked, but we were able to take a much-needed break and to spend some great time together as a family. We all have "If had not rained so much I would like to have..." stories, but we all agree it was a really good five days.

And so, in this last installment of vacation stories, I will post a few pictures we didn't want Stan to see (it was Stan and Caye's camper we borrowed). But since Stan reads my blog, all I can say is "We tried to keep the dogs off the furniture as much as possible, but they were just so dern cute! Plus, if it helps, I vacuumed everything thoroughly this afternoon."

Now who could look at that picture and now go "awww"?

I don't know what catches the attention more...the length of the tongue or the timing of the picture!

More doggie torture by Amanda.

The dogs are resting peacefully...I'm not sure what the child is doing.

Stomachs Feeling Better, Now It's Just Rain and Chiggers

Ah yes, the joy of chiggers. We've all got them, but Amanda has them the worst. They are not fun.

And yes, it rained again today. I already shared my "fun" experience first thing taking the dogs for a walk. After Amanda and I got back from the lake, I was wondering if we should call my parents back and have them come on out here after all since it was not raining. Good thing we never made that call...just as we were getting ready to load up the truck to head over to their house, another DOWNPOUR came. I gotta tell ya, I'm pretty sick of rain.

So we went over to my parents and carried all of the food we were supposed to cook here. We grilled out and ate "outside" on their covered porch. Hamburgers, corn on the cob, chips and Smores. Doesn't get much better than that, although the Smores did not have quite the same feeling being cooked over the stove burner instead of a campfire.

"Indoor Smores"

We finished our game of dominoes from Saturday night, hung out and talked for a while and then came back to the camper. It is not raining (right now) and it is nice a cool outside. We will be able to open the windows tonight and enjoy a nice cool evening. Since most everybody left the park today, it will be nice and quiet, too.

Two lousy points! But I want you to know, I AM NOT BITTER ABOUT NOT WINNING!

We are praying for no rain in the morning. We'd like to pack up and then take Amanda, Brooke and the dogs down to the beach while I hook up the camper and dump all of the storage tanks.

We are thankful everybody's tummies feel better tonight. We'll just scratch a few chiggers and enjoy the cool evening.

A Blur of Misery

Yesterday was NOT a fun day and it was NOT what vacation is supposed to be like! I don't know if Brooke and I got what Amanda had or what, but we were miserable. Mine started out in the morning. My stomach was upset and I got a fever. I finally just laid in bed because I felt so miserable. Brooke was nauseous and finally came down with a fever, too I think.

In the afternoon, I took some Tylenol which helped reduce my fever, so we all went down to the lake for Amanda to swim. When we got back, my stomach was feeling better so I ate. Shouldn't have done that. Never got sick like Amanda did, but my stomach was upset all night long. We laid around the rest of the evening while Amanda read and watched movies. My back hurt from laying around so much, so Amanda and I took the dogs for a walk right before she went to bed. Once we got to the far end of our loop, we realized we had come out WAY TOO FAR. We were both exhausted when we got back and I felt terrible again.

Amanda at the beach. She didn't feel it necessary to wear her swimsuit, but she ended up going swimming anyway!

We all went to bed by 9:00pm and had a fitful night of sleep (Brooke and I slept fitfully...Amanda was fine). Sometime during the night, my stomach finally settled down and my fever broke. I still slept fitfully, but I felt better when I got up this morning. Brooke is still trying to recover fully.

TODAY, MONDAY
I got up this morning at 7:30am since my back was hurting from being in bed so much. I took the dogs for a walk to do their morning potty break. Sully is so afraid of everything that he won't go potty until we literally walk it out of him! So my day began with a 20 minute walk in the rain. When I came back, I was soaked along with both dogs.

Amanda wanted to go swimming today, so after the rain stopped, I took her down to the lake for an hour and a half. Brooke stayed with the dogs trying to get better. My parents were supposed to come this afternoon for dinner, but we decided to go to their house instead. We don't know if it will be raining when it is time to grill out, and we'd like to take a break from all the mud.

So yesterday was just a blur...lots of rain and feeling cruddy. Today is a little better, but it's still gonna rain again. We can't go geocaching because the trails are closed due to all the rain. I'm trying to remember if we've had this many consecutive days of rain all year. It's good to be away, but all the rain and being sick put a real damper on our day yesterday.

A Day Without My Watch

I've been trying something on my (Friday) day off and on Saturday if we do not have someplace we have to be...I don't wear my watch. It's not like I don't see a clock all day, but it is an effort to relax and not be so driven by the work things I have to get done.

So today, being vacation and all, I did not wear my watch. I don't think it is because of not wearing a watch, but today was the first day I really relaxed. We slept in to about 8am, had cereal for breakfast, got another COLD! shower, and did some reading (Rob & Brooke) and some movie watching (Amanda) before lunch while it was continuing to rain on and off.

I'm eating breakfast while Amanda finishes up a painting from her vacation workbook

Amanda watching DVDs in her "luxury hotel" (her words)

After lunch, Brooke relaxed by taking a nap while Amanda and I biked down to lake, played in the lake (Amanda did), biked to Penn Farm and took a tour of what farm life was like in the late 1800-early 1900's. We both found that very interesting.

The original house on the Penn Farm property...well, sorta. They kept telling us how "authentic" the house was, but the more questions that were asked, the more our guide kept saying, "That may have changed during some of the renovations."

A lizard we saw on our Penn Farm tour. We are relatively certain he was not one of the "original" animals on the farm in the late 1800s.

A not-so-exciting "original" watering trough...with a pretty model posing for us!

If you look closely, you can see a windmill in this picture.

This tractor was not actually used on the Penn Farm, but it was from that era which was sometime between the late 1800s to mid-1900's.

We biked back home in time for Brooke and Amanda to take a HOT! shower and then rest a little before my parents came to visit. They arrived in Dad's new Dodge pickup which we quickly unloaded (they brought food) and we fired up the grill. Dinner consisted of grilled chicken (between Brooke's marinade and my humble-yet-expert grilling, it was delicious!!), green bean salad, fruit salad and Smores cooked over the campfire for dessert. Sully growled and barked the whole time we were outside and I smushed my Smore together too hard squshing some hot marshmallow onto my foot, but other than that, sitting outside enjoying the lack of rain (and abudance of mud!) was very nice.

So my folks have left, Amadna is in bed, Brooke is reading and I am blogging. The clock on my computer says it is now 9:35pm. I'm going to shut down the computer, read until I want to go to bed and sleep until I want to get up. That is what a day without my watch is supposed to be like.

Thank the Lord We Were Not Trying to Tent Camp

Rain...that's what most of the day consisted of. Actually, I'm not sure it was raining when we first woke up this morning. But then again, I don't usually remember much when I wake up at 2:30am! Amanda came into our room telling us her stomach was hurting. No gassy tummy and nothing Tums was helping. We have no thermomether, but it felt like she had a fever, too. We were up for an hour, then she went to lay down with Brooke in our bed while I laid on the couch (more like a couchette...it is short!). Come 5:30am I was awakened to a shaking camper and Brooke rushing Amanda to the restroom. After that, her stomach felt fine (you figured out she puked, right?) and she was ready to get in her own bed. We all slept until 8:30am or so. When we got up, Amanda took the dogs out to go potty and got sick once more. After that, she has been fine all day. She feels a little warm tonight, so we'll see what happens.

So I cooked some bacon and eggs for breakfast, Brooke and I read, Amanda watched some TV shows of DVD, we took cold showers in the bath house and the we went to Wal-Mart to buy the rest of the groceries we need for the week. We drove around for a bit and then came home for lunch. Amanda had Jello and one piece of turkey to make sure her tummy would be OK. After lunch, I took a nap while Brooke, Amanda and the dogs went for a walk in between rain showers. They came back and told me about the dead rattlesnake they found on the way to the playground!

We were going to go watch a movie tonight, but since we've already seen Shrek the Third and Spiderman 3, we went to Joe's Crab Shack to eat dinner instead. And since the reptile show here at the park got rained out (Amanda was very disappointed), we came back to the camper, played some Sorry and Domino's, wresteled on the bed (shaking the whole camper) and got Amanda to be for the evening. She feels a little warm, but we prayed she'd make it through the night and her tummy would be OK. I'm about to join Brooke reading then we may watch a movie before heading to bed.

Lots of rain today...pretty much all day. Thank the Lord we were not trying to tent camp!

Playing Sorry in the rain...or actually, in the camper while it was raining outside

A Great Start on Vacation

Our day began 12 hours ago when we rolled over and hit the snooze alarm for the first time. Tomorrow is technically the last day of school for Amanda, but we started our vacation today. My good friend Stan owns a nice 5th wheel camper and has been kind enough to let us borrow it, so we are spending our Memorial Day weekend (Thursday night-Tuesday lunch) at Cedar Hill State Park. School got out at 1:45pm today, so we picked up Amanda, finished packing up the camper and headed out.

I have pulled trailers before, but never a 5th wheel and never something quite this big (approx. 30 feet). I have a CDL to drive the church bus and I have driven school busses before, so I was a bit surprised how different it was driving with the camper. Stan took me out before we left today and gave me some driving instructions and let me practice backing up and parking.

As we left, it started sprinkling but then it quit by the time we got to the State Park (about 25 minutes from our house). I'm glad we camp to the Park today because there was only one other person checking in when we got here. We checked in, drove to our spot, I backed in (that is I backed in, pulled up, backed in, pulled up, backed in, pulled up and finally got it right), got the camper leveled and had just hooked up the water and electricity when it began to rain. I finished up just in the nick of time. It is wonderful to "camp" with AC and no worries about rain!

Brooke cooked us macaroni and cheese and BBQ hotdogs for dinner (sounds like a good camping meal, doesn't it!). We then made a quick run down the road to Racetrac to get some ice and a large Diet Coke. Amanda is coloring, Brooke is reading, I'm blogging (well, keeping a record to post to my blog when I get back), the dogs are resting peacefully and the rain is pitter-pattering on the camper. Nothing to do but read and chill out (and maybe watch a DVD movie later). A great start on vacation!