The ticks seem to be abundant!

It amazes me that the child (Hanna) that can attract a mosquito from miles away, has gone without being affected by the ticks that have plagued the rest of our family from our weekend's adventures. Not sure what it is about her, but she seems to miss the ticks everytime! John took his shower last night, and found he too had been attacked by the little creatures! He had two on his waste, and one that I'm not allowed to mention. Let's just say, as I removed it, I nearly had tears running down my leg! Don't you dare tell him I told! I could have really gotten back at him for pinching me with those tweezers trying to get my tick! Too funny! My Aunt Virginia had just told us a similar story about a boy who needed his father's help removing a tick that had attached itself to his delicate region. It was a good laugh at John's expense. Since we seem to all be literally crawling with ticks, I called the vet's office this morning to see what I could use on the dog to kill any that might be on her, since I'll never find little ticks on a big black dog! They sold me a bottle of Frontline spray.

Last night on Facebook, one of Hanna's friend's mother who is one of my FB friends, wrote on my wall "Caroline said Hanna got bit by an alligator. There must be a good story there." That made me laugh! Hanna's stories really seem to grow. I asked her this morning, "Did you tell Caroline the alligator bit you?" She just grinned, and said, "I did!" I explained that even in good fun, it's a lie, and she shouldn't tell such stories. A few years ago, Hanna had a friend at our church's preschool named Anna. They were such good friends, and were only 3 days apart in age. Anna's mother approached me in the fellowship hall one Sunday and asked me if John was okay. I told her he was perfectly fine, and wondered what sparked the inquiry. Apparently, Anna had come home and at the dinner table told her parents that Hanna's Daddy got his head chopped off! I knew immediately where that came from, and it took me a few minutes to recover from laughter to tell her the story. The previous weekend, we had a snake in the back yard, that the dog had caught and so graciously brought to me and dropped it curled up on my feet. As it unraveled, I yelled for John to come out and get the thing! He came out, chased it down, and chopped the snake's head off with the shovel! I guess the story that Anna conveyed was that John cut his head off... short for... John cut the snakes head off. I thanked my friend Donna for the concern for John's well-being. Which, by the way, anyone that remembers Donna, she is expecting TWINS!

Some things are funny, some things just aren't...

I'll start with the funny! Last night, after putting the kids to bed, I realized I had not checked myself for ticks, as we always perform this routine when we return from camping. We found one on Daniel's leg Saturday night at the campground during his bath. Ask him about it, he'll be sure to tell you all about how Mommy pulled it off of him and squished it, then pushed it down the drain in the shower. I suspected I would find at least one tick on myself, as yesterday morning, I stopped two very large ones on their way up my legs! Eww! They remind me of a spider with revenge in mind! As I undressed for my shower, I found a little one. He'd attached himself to my waste just slightly towards my back, yet still on my side. You know, that spot that's really hard to get at for a moment, let alone an extended period of time. I tried to get him, but soon went into a muscle spasm. Okay, I had to put my pants back on and head out to the living room to ask for assistance from John. I fully realize how badly he needs new glasses at this point! He lost them last year, I believe down an elevator shaft?? Anway, I handed him the tweezers, and he found the tick. "Is this him or you?" he said, as he was pulling at my skin. I said.. "That's me! Grab the tick please!" This continued, I tried to assist, he swatted my hand, and finally I walked away and said "You're useless!" I went to the bathroom with the tweezers in hand and was determined to get that sucker, and finally I did! Squished him, and down the drain he went! Thankfully, he was the only one! I've left John to inspect himself, although I'm wondering if he'll be able to see them if he has any hitch-hikers!

This morning, I realized how very fortunate I am to have the family that I have. I was speaking to a teacher at Daniel's school who was telling me she'd be out this week because she and her husband have to go out of state to pick up his children. He has not seen his children in 10 years because his ex-wife ran off with them. The children have since been put in foster care, and are now looking to be put into a permanent home. I'm not sure exactly how these children have been in foster care off and on, and this is the first the father is finally hearing about his children, but they desperately need him now. This teacher is facing a personal challenge, bringing step children into her home that are aged 12 & 13 years old, and considered "special needs" children. These children do not know their father, and certainly do not know their step mother. She will be bringing these children into her home, to adapt to life with her children. I do not envy this woman's challenges ahead of her, and I pray that God will guide her to do the right thing, and support these children in the best way that she can. I wanted to cry for her, and tell her to be strong, and that God will guide her! I am so thankful for the life that I live! It makes me realize that what I consider to be major obstacles in my life, are not that big in the broad spectrum of life!

One more thing...

I do have to post one more thing that I forgot about our weekend. This is especially funny to my church friends that "FB" and saw Jennifer's post about buying worms. I had gone to WalMart and purchased worms for our trip on Friday after my doctor's appointment. The best way to preserve worms is to keep them refrigerated. After our day Saturday, we weren't sure if we'd be going again Sunday morning, and possibly we'd be giving them to Uncle Bud to use for fishing Sunday afternoon. When John and I went to bed Saturday night, we thought if we'd left them out on the table, as they'd been all afternoon, maybe a critter would come into camp and raid the container of worms. So, I picked them up and put them in the fridge overnight. They're in a sealed container, it's perfectly fine!

Sunday morning while Hanna was getting dressed we saw something on the floor in the camper. It was a worm. Hmmm.. how'd he get there? I tossed him out the door. About 30 minutes later, I went into the camper to get something.. another worm. Weird, how are they getting out? Daniel came into the camper, and we were looking at something, there was another one! I opened the refrigerator door, and there was dirt all inside the bottom shelf, and there were worms stuck to the inside of the door! The lid was not very tight, and they were escaping. John is a little puzzled as to HOW they were getting out of the fridge, thinking the seal on the door should be tighter than that.. but I wasn't surprised! It comes off easily for cleaning.

Eventually, I handed Daniel the container of worms, and told him to go dump them out in the woods. He said, we wished he could keep one in a cage! Don't worry, when I got home, I took my bottle of ammonia and sprayed the inside of the fridge and wiped it out really well, even pulled out the shelves and sprayed them! No worm germs in there now!

So many firsts.. it was fun!

We've returned home from our weekend of camping at O'Leno State Park, and it was so much fun! I enjoy the camping time we spend with additional family the most! John and I both said on the way home, we wish we had friends that like to camp and would go with us! My Aunt Virginia and her husband, Bud went with us to O'Leno, and we're excited about the prospects of them becoming campground hosts. They currently host when their schedules permit at a state park in Tallahasse. It's not a camping park, "just" one of those parks that boasts beautiful gardens, but as hosts, they get to camp while they stay there at the host sites. They were so impressed with O'Leno that they inquired about the contact information for becoming a host there. It would be very beneficial since Bud often has doctor appointments at the VA hospital over in Gainesville, and the campground it only 24 miles from there, as opposed to the 70 miles from their house in Callahan. Typically, they said, Bud's appointments are at 8:00 in the morning, and they may start using this campground as an "overnight" spot when he has appointments. For senior citizens to stay at this particular park it is only $8 per night. They certainly could not get a hotel for anything close to those prices! As it is, he has an appointment tomorrow morning, so they decided to stay another night. Lucky them!

Our weekend was filled with firsts! The biggest being, Daniel's first fish! It was small for sure, but we were so proud of him. Our Saturday morning started out with Aunt Ginny and Uncle Bud heading back home to Callahan, as Bud's medicines were left at home on the kitchen counter. Bud is a severe diabetic, so the trip back was very necessary! We went off on our own, down to the swinging bridge in the morning, with fishing rods in hand. Daniel has been fishing before, but he's never caught anything until today. We went down to the shore, and started fishing down just under the bridge, and then moved on down the bank. It didn't take long for Daniel to hook up with a bream! His very first fish! Yay Daniel!
The picture shows it, but unfortunately, it was a small one, and it had turned sideways, so I got the skinny profile of the fish, which makes it look even smaller! A few minutes later, just as John dropped in the line for Daniel, a fish took that bite, and they reeled in another one. Daniel openly admits, Daddy caught that one! Hanna was very disappointed that she and I did not catch anything! Better luck next time! John explained to her that many times when the two of us go fishing, one of us gets "skunked" while the other does very well. She wasn't feeling very sympathetic. The kids quickly got bored sitting, waiting for a phantom bite that may never come, so they started playing around with stuff on the bank, and tossing sticks into the water. I saw it coming.. just as Daniel was trying to pick up a stick, he was at such an incline, he stumbled, tripped, and splash! He screamed "the water's shivery!" As chilly as the nights have been, even the days, the water was not very warm, and I would not have wanted to fallen in either up to my waist! That ended our morning session at the river, as we now had to walk back to our campsite to get Daniel into dry clothes and shoes! He commented with every other step about the water squishing out of his shoes!



We went back, changed clothes, and went to rent our canoes. We rented two canoes, one for the boys, and one for the girls, including Callie! This was Hanna and Daniel's first time in a canoe and their first time seeing an alligator in the wild! We passed him once, and missed him, but then a lady on the bank, sitting watching, pointed him out. A man and a woman, who passed by in a kayak commented that they thought maybe he was dead because he was in the exact same place yesterday, and didn't seem to be moving. Well, we found out to Hanna's disliking, he was not dead! As we passed by a second time, he decided to check things out, and swam around in the river around our canoes, finally going underwater for awhile. He surfaced again later, and we saw him then too. My guess was that he was probably an 8-foot alligator. Hanna was upset that we didn't fish while in the canoes, but John and I both agreed we didn't want to each try dodging loose fishing hooks attached to lines, waving past our ears and such, while in a canoe. Not this trip, anyway! The kids need to learn a little more about safety with fish hooks before we trust them in such close proximity! I found it very interesting that the couple in the kayak were at Gold Head when we were there over New Year's weekend. It's a small world!



When we returned to camp, we saw Aunt Ginny and Uncle Bud returning to camp, and the kids convinced them they needed to go see the swinging bridge. Daniel was right at home, keeping up with their pace, as we walked back down to the park to see the bridge yet again! Callie and Angus (their dog) both tried out the river, although this trip, Callie would not go deep into the river again, obviously remember her last trip to this bank, when she went underwater! She had a good time, none the less! When we returned to camp again, we came across a campsite where they were playing two guitars and a violin near a campfire. I commented that I should have brought my viola, they thought I said, I have a viola.. and said, "Go get it, and come play with us!" I wish I did have it with me at the time, although, I do not know how to "fiddle". Twice a month, on Sunday afternoons they have "old time dances" at the campground, in which they have square dancing and such, so it is possible that I could go again on such a weekend, and have the opportunity to learn how to fiddle and play with these groups. Wouldn't that be fun? When we left this morning, Aunt Ginny and Uncle Bud said they would be going back to listen to the music and enjoy watching the dancing. I really wish we had the time to have been able to stay today, but I'm sure we'll do so at some other time!

We've returned home with the laundry in full routine, the dog is exhausted, the kids are exhausted and cranky, and so are we! I think being out in the wild has stirred some "animal instincts" in Callie, as she also had a first this afternoon, when she finally caught a squirrel, and killed it. Daniel watched the whole thing, and commented he wished he could keep it as a pet. I explained we had to leave it alone while she had it, because it might bite us, but later, we picked it up with the shovel and put it in a garbage bag for the garbage man to take away on Tuesday!

Finally a post!

My dear friend and neighbor, Jenny informed me today that it was "poor blogger etiquette" to go so long without a post. So.. here I am, Jenny! I'm making a post!

It's getting late, and I want to get to bed at a reasonable hour, so I can be rested for our camping trip that starts late tomorrow afternoon! Imagine that, it's time for another camping trip. John and I have been very good at keeping to our commitment of a camping trip at least one weekend a month, with the exception of December. We have to make exception for December, due to Christmas, The Nutcracker, and of course.. Daniel's birthday! Tomorrow afternoon, we'll be headed over to O'Leno State Park, where we'll be meeting my Aunt Virginia and her husband Bud. We have adjacent sites, but I'm not sure how well they connect. And heaven only knows where the rocks will be on these two sites! The kids are very much looking forward to it, and frankly, so am I! We've planned on taking the canoe, although I'm seriously leaning towards renting two, rather than cramming both our kids and us into our single "3-man" canoe. It would hold us, but the kids would be a little cramped, and I could just see them starting to push and shove each other, and then we'd have a serious problem. As Daniel said today, "it's an issue". He educated me on the way home from school this evening as to what exactly an "issue" is... it's a problem, so it's an issue! Hanna asked this evening, as I put her to bed, if we could take her Barbie fishing rod, and Daniel's Spiderman rod. Of course! Kim.. I'll have to stop off at Wal-Mart and pick up some red wigglers!

To bring you up to speed on the comedy in our life, I'll start with IHOP on Fat Tuesday, or "National Pancake Day" at IHOP. I saw on Facebook that IHOP was having free pancakes on this day, and after my post there that we'd be going there for dinner, my cousin Mary text messaged me.. "which one you going to, and when?" We met up at the one in Fleming Island around 7pm, and waited an hour for a table, and took another hour plus at our table. We were getting into the truck to go home at 9:20pm! Late night for the kids! So, as we enjoyed our fun time with my cousin Mary, and her two kids, Christopher and Nicola, the kids were getting a little rowdy. No, not my kids you say! LOL! I heard Mary say, "Oh Daniel, honey, don't put that in your mouth!" I looked over, and there he was, sucking on the syrup bottle! I was horrified.. my child is leaving germs on the syrup bottle that sits on the table! John and Mary just laughed and laughed, and said.. "you think he's the only one that's ever done that?" I really didn't need to go there with that thought, and I'd prefer to think they are changed out with the passing of each new patron. Probably not, but I can dream!

Moving on, Ash Wednesday, we went to church of course, and there was also a pre-service dinner. It was hoped, we'd have much more people attend, eager for fellowship as we launched the Lenten season. I believe there were four different pots of soup, and plenty of variety of sandwiches. After my kids ate their meals, they were eyeing the cookies up on the cabinet. Daniel got his, without "issues". Hanna headed up to pick out her cookie, and I told her, look twice, decide and touch once! Suddenly, I heard a crash! I knew where it came from, and I just sat their for a brief moment, shaking my head. I looked up and saw a grin on our pastor's wife's face. I turned, and there was Hanna, looking quite flustered, with the plastic Publix bakery box dangling from the sleeve of her fleece jacket. She shook her arm, as she pointed at the tape hanging to the lid.. "It stuck to my arm, Mom!" Apparently, the tape that held the box closed, as it dangled freely, found her sleeve, held tight, and as she pulled her arm away, the box came with it, flinging the cookies to the floor! I picked them up, and placed them in the box, announcing to everyone we could either declare the "five second rule" or throw the cookies out. Are you kidding? They're cookies! Five Second Rule was the vote! I can tell you, my mother in law is the last one in the preschool/fellowship hall in the afternoons, and that floor was clean! If anyone knows Judy Chappell, they know, she leaves that floor clean, so I wasn't too worried about it. I felt better, knowing that I had disclosed the accident, and everyone knew exactly where those cookies had been since Hanna touched them!

Last but not least, and then I'm headed off to dry my hair, and go to bed...
You may recall during CHRISTmas season, Hanna was confused about elves versus slaves. She has so proudly declared her red hat with a white pom-pom her "slave hat". Then, in January, when she learned about Martin Luther King, she was telling me about the elves, and how the white people treated them so badly. Well, now we have another confusion.. pelicans versus leprechauns. Monday afternoon, she was talking to me about pelicans, and how they have long beaks with a pocket for scooping up fish. Since were are in the month of March, I'm guessing her class must have started talking about leprechauns. Tuesday, on the way home from school, I heard the comment, "I love leprechauns with their big beaks to scoop up fish." Hmm, leprechauns and beaks? What? Oh yeah, we talked about pelicans last night! I said, Hanna, do you mean pelicans have big beaks?" Yes, she said.. pelicans!

It might be a long day...

The kids didn't even go camping with us, yet by bedtime, Daniel had a fever of 102. Around 2am, Hanna woke me up, not feeling well. I noticed she seemed rather warm.. also 102. Hanna has just recently made an effort to throw up. Daniel is snuggled up with a blanket on the sofa. I think we're going to have a long day!

What a nice getaway...

John and I had such a nice time this weekend, just the two of us. It's amazing how quickly we can set up and break down camp without the time spent fussing over our children. However, even though it was peaceful, there were often times, it was so obvious that a part of our life was missing this trip out. When the people pulled in either side of us, and set up, as their children were running around, we couldn't help but think how much our children would have loved camping near so many other children. On our walk through the woods, we'd look at trees, and say, "The kids would love climbing those!", and we also took time to notice the stumps and roots along the way, commenting that one if not both of our children would have tripped over them for sure.




We had our camp set up by 6:30 Friday night, and sat down at the picnic table and made our sandwiches. Then we cleaned up our dishes, and built a fire. John laughed as I pulled out the marshmallows, since there were no kids with us. It's camping, and I'm a kid at heart, so yeah, I brought the marshmallows. Fire+camping=marshmallows. Period! When we were setting things up, we realized I forgot to pack the space heater! What was I thinking? However, we did get the chance to test the furnace in the camper, and I'm happy to say it works well. At some point during the night, it began raining and rained pretty much most of the day on Saturday. In the morning, we were standing under our awning, enjoying our coffee, when we heard a rumble of something unknown, that sounded like quite the crash. I said "That didn't sound good!" John suggested, perhaps someone was moving something around, until he walked around the side of our camper, and peaked into the site next to us. He said, "Oh Lord, that's not good!" In the site next to us, a family was set up in an old Coleman popup. So old, they had an old window unit a/c cut into the front wall. When they set up Friday night, apparently, the father neglected to put down the stabilizer jacks, which is why he was in the predicament he was in now. The rumbling was all the contents of his camper, including a cooler, quickly being redistributed to one end of his camper. He'd gone in to get something, and when he stepped to the back of the camper, up it went. Straight up on end! I hurried around the corner, and suggested perhaps we go and give them a hand, however, the mother and her children had managed to grab the front end and pull it back down. They were laughing about it, and everyone was okay. He also lowered the stabilizing jacks.

We walked down to the canoe launch area to determine the weather, as well as tides. We decided the rain had let up enough, and the tide was in far enough, we'd give canoeing a shot. We had a really nice time, despite the rain. As we were loading the canoe up, and shifting it into the water, there was an older gentleman standing on the dock, with his also large dog. He laughed, and said, "How are you going to get that big dog to stay still in the canoe?" We replied, "we're about to find out!" Yes, we took Callie with us in the canoe, and she did a very good job. She didn't jump around, or pace back and forth. It seemed as if she understood, in a canoe even a dog has to sit still. Eventually, she layed down and seemed quite bored with the situation. Until, I reeled in a fish, then she was very interested. John said, "Suzanne, don't start something that's going to get us all wet!" I played it low key, and she just sat there, watching. We didn't keep our fish, and actually only caught two small ones. But, at the end of the day, we could say, we went fishing, and caught something! It's a good day! Around 2:30, it seemed to be getting "late", but when we checked the time on the GPS, it gave us the accurate time; much earlier than we expected. The clouds were rolling in, the air was cooling off, and it was drizzling rain on us. The tide was going out, and we knew judging the tides at the launch early in the morning, if we didn't head back now, we wouldn't be getting back anytime soon! The sky seemed to clear later on, and we went for a nice walk in the woods. During our walk, we found a stick, and sent Callie chasing it several times. She followed it right into the creek, but once she got a mouthful of salty water, she dropped the stick, and headed back to the shore. She had no interest in going back into the water after that. We picked the stick up, and tossed it again, but it must have still had salty water on it, because she didn't want that, either, she rolled her lips to say it was a very distasteful stick!

Earlier in the day, we had considered going home, since it appeared to be looking like a miserable day. However, we stuck it out, and with the exception of the slight drizzle in the late afternoon, it cleared up to be a nice evening. The stars were even visible. That's good! We were glad we stayed, since it was a clear night, and we built a very nice fire, with marshmallows. By 9:30, we decided it was time to go shower, and then snuggle into bed and watch a movie. We'd started watching Pirates of the Caribbean earlier in the day, and never finished that. However, we fell asleep in the evening to Last of the Mohicans. We concluded that even though it was raining, it wasn't so bad with just the two of us, plus the dog. We agreed, had the kids been with us, it would have been miserable, and we would have left early for certain.

When we woke up Sunday morning, the sky had cleared. We heard it raining sometime during the night, but it had stopped by morning. When we checked the clock, we realized we'd stayed in bed until 8am! That's nearly unheard of in our house. Our children are always up by 7:30 at the very latest! We got up, made some breakfast, went for a long walk, then came back and packed up. Amazingly we did all that, and were still checking out by 11am. I'm not sure how many more times I will have to sweep out the camper before I get out all that sand! When we made it home, we had to set the camper up again, to allow the canvas bunkends to dry. I hope by Tuesday, it will be dry enough to close it up until our next family outing.

At lunch today, with Grandma and her friends, Daniel told Mr.Schreir that his mommy and daddy were going to kiss when they're camping. Mr.Schreir told Daniel to be sure to ask Daddy if he kissed her! Yes, he did...

I don't know how it has happened, or why it seems to be that every time we go camping one of our children, usually Daniel ends up with a fever when we return. It is amazing, that even though Daniel didn't go with us, when I put him to bed, he was running a fever of 102. How does this happen? I guess, like fire+camping=marshmallows, Daniel + camping= fever, regardless of where in the equation the camping and Daniel are.