Camping Post #1

We're back! :)

(Obviously) There wasn't Internet access at the campground, but I did have my laptop along for schoolwork purposes (high school... :P), and it was also useful to type up blog posts on a Word document and save them for posting later. :) So, there will now follow a short series of camping posts over the next couple days!

We stayed for 3 nights at the campground: Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. It took us 6 hours of driving to get to the campsite, and 12 to get back! The reason for this is that we drove a bit out of our way to meet a friend of Papa's that he got to know over Facebook, strangely enough. :) We went out to dinner with him and then hung out at a nearby park while he and Papa talked for a couple hours. Then we got back in the car and drove until about 11:30 to get home.

While at the campsite, we occupied four tents:
Tent #1: Papa, Mom, Thor, Bjorn, and Rosemary
Tent #2: The Girls: Sylvia, Camryn, Cecily, Sloan, and Gloria
Tent #3: Uncle Travis, Aunt Margaret, Isaac
Tent #4: The Boys: Knut and Ethan. (Thor would have been with them, but it was a tiny two-man tent and he preferred to share with Bjorn and Rosemary.)
THIS KNOWLEDGE MAY HELP WITH UNDERSTANDING FUTURE POSTS!!! (Just to explain why I explained this.)

One of my latest "obsessions" is collecting quotes. Book quotes, movie quotes, quotes from family members and friends, weird quotes that have no known origin, it doesn't really matter to me... but my family members know that anything funny they say might possibly be going on the blog. Some of them intentionally say more funny things, others don't care one way or the other, and still others ask after everything they say, "Is that going on the blog??" and are delighted if I answer "probably". :) During our camping trip, the period of time when all of us girls were in our tent at night and still awake became "quote time"... Sloan, Cecily, and Camryn would say random funny things and I would be typing them up as fast as I could. (My typing speed has probably increased over our camping trip...) Many of the coming Daily Family Insanities will be a few of these. What was really funny was, after I would type up a weird conversation, I would often have trouble remembering exactly what they said, so I would ask them to go through it again so I could check and make sure it was word-perfect. Sometimes I would be included in these "conversations" and I'd forget and have to ask them what it was that I said!! 

Like a good homeschool Mom, Mom had to tie in some History with our vacation. :) She brought along a Civil War-era book on tape that took place in the general area where we were camping: Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt.

The following conversation happened at the beginning of one of our hikes...

Mom: we can pretend we’re Daniel Boone… um… exploring.
Me: Why? Because it would be interesting? Comparatively, that would be boring! (After all, Daniel Boone didn’t have 11 kids with him!)
Mom: Well… I had to tie in some history like a good homeschool mom. Now I’ve done that; I can check it off my list.
Me: That’s going on the blog.