Not Me Monday - 6th edition

It's (not) that time again. It never sneaks up on me. I'm always near the top of the Mr. Linky list of participants in MckMama's Not Me Monday Carnival. Oh wait. I AM near the top this week. Multi-tasking** pays off once again!

Here are some more things I didn't do:

* I did not forget to send my own mother a birthday card and instead use this post to wish her a happy birthday and happy anniversary. (She and Paul were married one year ago yesterday.)
Sorry Mom! Hope you guys had a great day!

* I did not ask my husband to read a 378 page book about parenting and marriage as his Christmas present to me this year.

* I didn't take it one step further and ask him to discuss each chapter with me when he finished it.

* I did not go on vacation (without the kids) even though my daughter hadn't ever gone without nursing at least 2x a day for her whole life.

* I didn't take a breast pump along on our camping trip so I could still nurse my 2 year old when we got home because I wasn't ready to give up breastfeeding.

* It did not snow here almost all day on Sunday with winds gusting often to 40+ miles per hour.

* I did not still do an outdoor photo shoot Sunday afternoon.

* We did not eat half a loaf of pumpkin bread Sunday night that we were suppose to save for Julia's school today.

* I did not ignore all the reviews that said to go ahead and make 3 loaves at one time because the recipe is really that good. Which leads to....

** I am not speed baking another loaf as I type this despite the fact that kitchen timer says it won't be done in time to get to school at 10:15.

* We don't have a mouse problem in our house.

* I didn't find out about this problem in the middle of a meeting with our bosses when Brian admitted that Sharon had seen two mice while we were on vacation. (The topic of problems with the house had come up and they were giving us a heads up that when the temps drop the mice move in.)

* I am not considering letting a stray cat into our home in hopes that it will catch all the mice.

* I did not purposely keep my grocery cart behind me in the check out line on Saturday in order to keep some space between me and the lady behind me who was crowding my personal space. I did not have to stand my ground as she pushed my cart into my leg. I did not take my sweet time putting my groceries in the cart just to annoy her.

* Brian and I didn't laugh our heads off when we heard Julia call out "Help Me Down!" from her room.

* I did not use my elbows to protect my the kid's coloring book so Julia couldn't scribble on my page. Nope not me. How stupid would that be? It's just a coloring book. Who cares if there's black scribbles all over the perfect Piglet I just colored.

* I don't take Sam's Little People and create silly scenarios while we play just to see what kind of reaction I'll get out of him. Big Bird did not drive the police car to the scene of a car accident and haul away the car that caused the accident. The sheep did not order an ice cream cone at the ice cream shop. The pig didn't drive the mail truck through the drive thru.

Houston, we have a problem.

We are in the process of deciding if this kitty is the solution.




We live in a 70+ year old farm house and that means mice move in when the weather turns cold.
Brian put traps around the house and basement but if that doesn't work we might have to get a cat. The kids would be thrilled and surprisingly I think this little kitty would be too. He showed up on our porch last week and I couldn't help but put a dish of dogfood out for him. I figured it wouldn't hurt anything to give a stray some food. "What did you expect?" Brian said when the cat returned every day since for more handouts.

When he tried to get in the house a couple days ago I realized he wasn't just a stray. He's been around humans and is very friendly. Could he be the solution to our mouse problem?
We're going to give the traps a few more days and if they don't pan out we might be giving Houston (Huey for short) a tour of our home....

Pretty Please

The idea of coming up with fake blog names for Brian and I has been bouncing around my brain for a few months. It never hurts to keep as much of our identifying information private and when I can't resist the urge to write things about our park, I can't help but feel a twinge of worry that someone will come across my blog and put two and two together.

In our pre-kid days we used to be park rangers for the National Park Service and while we live and work in a park these days, we aren't really park rangers. Plus, I'm not 100% sure I want to take that direction with names. If fun, creative names happen to comes mind would you leave me a comment with your suggestion?

Thanks in advance!

Fall Frenzy

I'm doing my best to take the next few weeks one day at a time. See, I've got some "big" things coming up that when I start to think about them all at once I start to panic.

On Friday I have to navigate my way through Minneapolis to pick up two lenses I'm renting for a wedding on Saturday. The scariest part is having to leave a check for $2,500.00 as a damage deposit.

On Saturday I'm at the mercy of the weather God bestows on the Metro. If it's nice out I'll be able to do a senior portrait shoot in the morning and then go downtown to the same park where MY wedding pictures were taken and have the time of my life photographing a wedding with some pretty sweet equipment. If it's not nice out? I'll have to postpone the senior shoot for the third time and then photograph the wedding in the basement of the local American Legion building.

On Wednesday I'm hosting the end of the season meeting for park staff. My boss, my boss's boss, the office staff, the campground hosts, the maintenance staff will all gather here in my home to discuss the season. I'm so nervous about having the house in perfect shape for that day. It feels like I'm having 10 landlords over for lunch at once. This morning I cleaned and organized the laundry room. The breezeway is next and then I have to tackle my office which I never unpacked when we moved in almost six months ago.

The next day is Julia's 2nd birthday - her golden birthday to be exact. The pressure is on.

I get a short reprieve until October 11th when I need to have our chili contest entry ready for the Campground Chili Cook-off.

The next day is the closing of the campground as well as my church's Homecoming Sunday where I've been asked to take a group photo of the entire church. We are having people over to celebrate the end of the camping season which means I need to have a double batch of chili and a double batch of stew all ready to serve my guests right after church. Sam has requested a special cake for that day as his birthday is the following day.

Sam and Julia have school Monday morning (Sam's 4th birthday) so it's going to be tricky to squeeze in anything fun. I'm sure I'll figure something out.

Early (as in 4am) Thursday morning Brian and I are leaving for our Boundary Waters Trip. Packing for such a trip is time consuming and requires concentration. I'm glad Brian has been compiling a list of supplies for the past month. As anyone who's left their kids at home with someone else, the prep/packing is doubled due to the need to have everything set out for the kids.

I was 5 months pregnant with Julia the last time Brian and I spent a night away from home. Now we are going to be six hours away from our babies and completely unreachable for four whole days. Grandma and Grandpa will be staying with the kids here at the park so I know they are in good hands. It's just hard to know that we can't even call to check in or be contacted in case of an emergency.

Now that I've gotten all that off my chest it's time to get back to work. The breezeway is calling...

Home Grown Goodness

Hi.
My name is Carrie and until last week I'd never cooked a whole chicken before.

Phew! That felt good to get off my chest!
I felt like the only woman in her thirties who hadn't plopped a bird in a giant pot of boiling water before. If you were like me, let me be the first to tell you that there's nothing to it! Don't be a chicken!
Buy yourself some bone-in chicken (or in our case, thaw a bird given to us from Brian's cousin's farm), control your gag reflex as you cut it into manageable pieces, and prepare yourself to eat some of the most delicious chicken. All you have to do is keep an eye on it so it doesn't boil over and when the meat is no longer pink and is falling off the bone, times up!

I strained the broth, let it sit in the refrigerator for a day so the fat would harden at the top, and picked the meat off the bones to use in various recipes throughout the week.
Brian made a big pot of chicken noodle soup a couple days ago and I swear it tasted better knowing that it was homemade stock and not from the store.
There's just something about the change in seasons that makes me want to hurry up and make all the comfort foods we don't eat in the summer.


Another thing we'll be eating a lot of this winter is apple pie. A couple of weeks ago I discovered that there is an apple tree in the park. We have no idea what kind of apples it produces except to say that they are ginormous.
We haven't taken out the big ladder from the shop yet to pick the apples way up high. Instead, we settled for shaking the lower branches until a few apples fell to the ground. Even using this method requires the little ladder and establishing a safe distance away for the kids to watch.

We haven't eaten very many apples this year because of rising food costs and the fact that they are on the dirty dozen list of fruits and veggies we should buy organically. Now we've been blessed with FREE ORGANIC apples!

Here's the recipe we love for French Apple Pie (tastes a lot like apple crisp, but with the bonus of a bottom crust)

FRENCH APPLE PIE
1 pie crust (9 inch pie)
1/2 c sugar
1/4 c cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
6 cups cored, peeled and thinly sliced apples
1 c flour
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c butter

Prepare pie crust according to directions on package for a filled one-crust pie.
Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix sugar, cornstarch, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt into bowl. Stir in sliced apples.
Spoon apple slices into pie plate.
(I like to sprinkle extra cinnamon and nutmeg on top)
To prepare crumb topping; mix together flour and brown sugar. Blend in butter until crumbly. Sprinkle crumb topping over pie.
Place pie on sheet pan on center oven rack.
Bake for 1 hour 30 minutes.
Enjoy!

Give 'em an inch...

and they'll take a.....



I asked Brian to take some pictures of the kids and I working on a project and mixed in, this is what I find - a picture of his foot, complete with tan lines from his Keens.
Never a dull moment around here. :)

Fall is in the air

Can you feel it? Here in Minnesota we can. Whenever the humidity drops along with the temperature I'm transported back in time to our Rangering days at Voyageurs National Park. This is the CCC building where Brian spent Thursday evenings giving a talk about the French Canadian Voyageurs who's canoe routes helped establish the boundaries between the US and Canada.


This cabin was built in the 1930's and serves as the Ash River Visitor Center. Brian's lodging the summers before we were married was right next door. Talk about an easy commute! My commute my first summer was about 50 yards. It was a good life there. We knew it too and tried not to take any of it for granted. You can read more about how this cabin played a part in our courtship here.



Here's my hubby in his uniform. Sorry, no Ranger Carrie pictures to share this time.


I'm sorry for the quality of these pictures of pictures, but take my word for it, the colors on our tour of Minnesota State Parks was fantastic - so was the weather except a few mornings when we had to break the ice in Conor's water bowl.


Fall wasn't the only thing in the air ten years ago when we took a detour to join Brian's family and friends at Father Hennepin State Park. That weekend signified the revival of the Fall Camping Trip tradition.

I bet you can guess where we'll be enjoying the cooler weather, the brilliant fall colors, and good company this year!

The worst drought yet

***Pop Quiz answer posted at the end of this post***

There is an ebb and flow to the number of pacifiers we can locate on any given day. Ever since Julia decided that she needed at least three every night to fall asleep we've been lucky enough to be able to keep track of 3-5 most of the time.....until yesterday. We came home from the hospital and couldn't find any. Somewhere I know there is a stash of them that we brought home from the cabin last week, but we haven't been able to find them anywhere. We tore the house apart at bedtime, desperate to find one. The couch coughed one up so disaster was averted.

Twenty-four hours later we found ourselves in the same desperate situation because the one paci Brian found in the couch wasn't the kind she liked and for some reason and the only other one I could scrounge up was the one we had cut the end off when we broke Sam of the paci habit.
"BOKE!" she said with a sob - over and over again. She was also crying about going to the bathroom too so I had to keep getting her up and taking her potty.

A knock on the door tore me away from the bedtime battle and five minutes later as I was walking back from checking a camper in at the office I remembered that there might be a paci in the stroller I keep in the back of the van. Score!
She was out like a light before I could walk the five steps to her bedroom door. (Which goes completely against the answer to my pop quiz question from earlier in the week - The average person takes 7 minutes to fall asleep.)

9 days with Daddy

Last month Brian was laid off from work for a week. This was a mixed blessing for us. One one hand we were stoked to get extra time with him, but missing a paycheck is brutal.
We also had to tend with the fact that we NEVER get time to do things as a family away from the park. We thought long and hard about what special activities we could do during this rare window of opportunity.
We kayaked a few times over the 4 of July weekend.


We dined on our porch many times. Thanks for bringing the yummy shortcake Sharon!



We cooled off at the beach at least three of the days.


This is the face I get when I ask Julia to smile lately.




We went to church together and watched little Sierra get baptized.


We made it up to the tennis courts for the first time this season. If you can call always being careful not to bop the kids with the ball playing tennis.



Sam's coordination is improving the older he gets. He enjoyed hitting the ball so much he didn't want to wait for his turn.


I'm looking forward to the day that they kids are old enough to play on the playground near the courts while Brian and I play tennis.


Our one day away from the park we chose to visit the Como Zoo. It was HOT like it usually is when we go, but we went early and had a great time. Our favorite spot was the Butterfly Garden. I could have stayed in there for hours.




Back at home we grilled, roasted marshmallows, attempted to sleep in the tent,



and spent some time fishing.















Of course the time went by too fast and soon Daddy had to return to his routine of waking at 5:15am.

A no good, very bad, horrible day

You get the idea.

It started out fine with the kids sleeping until 7:00 and them letting me snooze until 8ish.
We had breakfast and then got busy picking up the house before the Teddy Bear Picnic program at our local library. I fired up my computer to get some work done while the kids listened to a book on tape and was surprised to see that my desktop background picture was missing. That's when my heart sank. It felt like I'd been punched in the stomach. My computer had reset itself. Everything is gone. Everything. I refuse to dwell on it until I know for sure whether the tech guys can recover my data, but for the rest of the week I will be without my computer. One of the perks of living across the street from my place of employment is the opportunity to come over here to check my email, check in with Mck Mama, and blog if there's anything to blog about after the kids are asleep.

So here I sit in the cold, eerily quiet office recounting a day I'd much rather forget, but alas...life isn't always easy. It isn't always pretty, but it's our life and if I don't record the bad days and remember the lessons I learned - what good would that be?

After dropping my computer off at the tech shop I took the kids for their last dip in the community center pool. Our membership expires at the end of the month so we made sure we went out with a bang. Four hours we spent splashing, lounging, napping (only Julia), eating, bribing (to get Sam to put his face in the water), falling (a mean little girl chased Sam until he fell and skinned his knees), and dumping water on Mommy's head.

Back at home we hustled to get cleaned up before Julia and I had to leave for a baby shower. The kids took baths and while I showered they played in the playroom so Brian could run over to the office to tend to a camper. We've been letting them play unsupervised in the playroom for over a month now without anything bad happening. That streak ended today when I opened the door to find Julia covered in p**p. It was on her entire body (except her face and hair). The five minutes I had left to get ready for the shower was spent scrubbing Julia and our brand new carpet. She had taken off her diaper and p**ped on the floor.
I don't want to know how it got all over her body.
I just don't.
The diaper was on the floor, clean as a whistle.

Brian came home in time to clean the carpet some more and I ran to the basement to get a gift bag. I got the gift ready, looked for a bow for Julia's hair, and was in the process of brushing my teeth when I called up to Brian to see if he was going to bring Julia down like I had asked. (big house - we don't always hear each other)
"I did" he replied.
"THEN WHERE IS SHE????" I screamed as I ran through the house and out the front door.
The image of Julia standing 100 yards away from me on one of the park roads, barefoot and crying will remain with me for a looooong time.
I spit my toothpaste in the grass and scooped up my baby girl.
Could this day get any worse?
Thankfully no.

The summer of [fill in the blank]

There are things that are unique about this summer that I don't want to fall between the cracks in my memory.

For the fun of it, what are some of your favorite memories of the summer so far?

Here are mine:

This is the summer of getting back on the water after 2 long years.


...watching Sam get the hang of tennis (and baseball)


the summer the kids became playmates instead of just siblings


The summer we went to the beach almost every day


The first summer we had friends over to frolic in "our" lake


The summer it was a real treat to go anywhere because of $4 a gallon gas
(Como Zoo)


The first summer that I was home with only my kids. Stay at home mom? Not even close. Photography or park work keeps me hopping.


The summer we had cool weather well into June

the summer Sam flew a kite all by himself

the summer we got extra time with Daddy now that he works 10 minutes from home


* The wedding anniversary we celebrated at a bar...with the kids


* The summer of two playgroups at local parks and hosting regular playdates at our house


* the summer I could let Sam be more independent


And while I don't have the pictures to prove it, this is also the summer we got back to basics. No more satellite TV, no more store bought bread or crackers, no more land line telephone, and no more high speed Internet.

Thursday Thirteen - by the numbers

1. Eleven - the number of errands we ran today
2. Seven- the number of hours it took us to complete those errands
3. Four - the number of stops were were able to leave the kids in the car since all of us were along
4. Thirty - the number of minutes I have until I have to be at work
5. Three - the number of flours I bought at the health food store (Rye, Corn (meal), Wheat
6. Fifteen - the number of great shots the photographer got of Julia this morning
7. Zero - the amount of money I spent on portraits today (took a HUGE amount of restraint)
8. Two hundred - the number of campers that will be here for the next four days
9. Six - the number of days Brian has been laid off of work
10. Thirty-seven - the number of bran muffins we've eaten in the past week
11. One - the number of days I have to find someone to take over our wireless internet connection before I cancel our high speed connection - anyone local interested in a two year plan for $60 a month?
12. Three - the number of campers that have driven past my house since I started this post
13. Nine - the number of days Brian's mom was away from home recovering from knee replacement surgery - Welcome Home Rena!! We love you!!!!

penny pinchers and picky eaters...

...don't go well with rising food prices. At the beginning of the month when I swore off a diet consisting almost entirely of processed foods I didn't realize the scope of the challenge I was taking on. I knew it would be hard to give up the junk food, but what I didn't realize was how difficult it would be to find a variety of healthy alternatives that we could fill our tummies without emptying our bank account. Over the past three weeks I've picked up a few things that I thought I'd share with anyone else out there who's looking for healthy and affordable options. It's nothing fancy, but what do expect for a $50 a week food budget? Please keep in mind some items carry over from other weeks shopping trips. The goal is to coordinate meals that will use every last mushroom, green pepper, and leaf of lettuce before they go bad in my crisper drawer AND to make things my picky children husband will eat.

Spaghetti with whole wheat pasta.-
I buy one of the big jars so I can stretch it for two meals.
Any leftover veggies from earlier meals get thrown into the sauce or put in a toss salad.
I have a bag of ravioli in the freezer that I alternate with the regular spaghetti noodles to mix it up from week to week.

Tacos
Flour tortillas last for a number of meals around here especially since we switch it up with mulit-grain tortilla chips for taco salads. We get a good helping of lettuce and tomato with this meal too (getting more fresh fruits and veggies into our meals is a priority)
It also helps that we have a farmer in the family who sells us fantastic hamburger at an unheard of price.
My friend Jennifer gave me a recipe for seasoning that is tasty, doesn't have the bad stuff in the store packets, and is more affordable. I've also made chicken fajitas by marinating the chicken in Italian dressing for 30 minutes prior to sauteing and then adding some chili powder to the oil in the pan before tossing in the veggies.

It goes without saying that buying in bulk and freezing dinner size portions of meats can save money too. It's so nice to pull out a Ziploc baggie of brats instead of having to buy them in small packages each time. If I buy buns for burgers or brats I feel OK about paying extra for the whole grain kind since we get two meals out of a package of eight. Brian will use the left over bun for his tuna salad sandwich during the week or I'll slather them with PB&J for a picnic at the beach.
We're also not above eating brats on hamburger buns or hamburgers on brat buns.

A staple meal around here are chicken kabobs with mushrooms and green peppers. Brian has a secret ingredient that makes these kabobs my favorite meal next to a steak from Biaggi's. While he's outside grilling the chicken to perfection, I'm inside making couscous. Notice who gets the easy job. :)
Sam doesn't like peppers or mushrooms so we always have a bag of baby carrots on hand.
If there's extra chicken Brian will grill it with the kabobs so we can have Chicken Cesar Salads the next day.

I follow the dirty dozen list and purchase organic peppers and strawberries, but conventional bananas, kiwi, mushrooms, and carrots.


Speaking of bananas...
My kids get their fill of potassium everyday for sure.
They eat them as snacks at the park.
They eat them for breakfast (or lunch) sliced with peanut butter on them.
In fact, that's exactly what they had for lunch today. As well as this concoction:
I steamed frozen veggies (Brittany's family uses frozen berries a lot, - another great money saver).
And then use that water (where some nutrients escaped to) to make my couscous. Two servings filled the kids and I up - something that's hard to do sometimes. These kids are bottomless pits!
Sam only likes carrots right now and I'm OK with that. This was the first time he's tried couscous and I'm thrilled that he likes it.
I had no doubt that Julia would dig right in and sure enough, that's exactly what she did.




You wouldn't know it by the way they are eating, but they both had huge bowls of Grape Nuts with fresh strawberries for breakfast.

Another breakfast food that we actually rarely eat for breakfast is eggs. Last night I made scrambled eggs with green onions, mushrooms, green peppers, and tater tots for Julia and I, plain scrambled eggs for Sam, and sunny side up eggs for Brian. For the most part I don't consider myself to be a short order cook kinda mom, but plain ol' scrambled eggs gets boring for most of us.

The tater tots were originally purchased for Tater-Tot Hot Dish as were the veggies from lunch today. I love Tater Tot Hot Dish! I also love that it's easy and filling. I recently found my box of cookbooks and am anxious to try out a homemade white sauce from my More With Less Cookbook. Here's my current recipe for the hotdish if you aren't familiar with this Midwest Meal:

Brown 2 pounds of hamburger, drain
Add 1 can cream of whatever soup
Add one bag of frozen mixed veggies
Transfer to deep baking dish and top with tater tots
Bake at 350 for 45 minutes
Enjoy!

I think I've covered the main things we eat around here... Oh wait! How could I forget pancakes!?!!?!?! When we get to the end of the week and our fruit bowl and crisper drawer are getting bare I pull out the pancake mix. The kids gobble them up faster than Brian can make them on our little frying pan.

While this particular brand of pancakes is delicious, I won't be getting any more when it's gone. Instead, I am going to make a batch of homemade mix from my More With Less cookbook. My family has prepared foods from the cookbook for decades. I "borrowed" my mom's copy years ago but lost it during a move. A few years later my cousin, Deb, gave me a new copy for Christmas (along with homemade bread, organic chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, a spider plant descendant of our great-grandmother's plant which was planted in dirt from the family cabin in Northern Minnesota). The cookbooks is perfect for families who are trying to get away from processed foods and save money at the same time. I've already tried a few of the recipes and will share the results in upcoming More With Less posts.

By the numbers

6 - the number of months it took us to kill 3 goldfish
2 - the number of well behaved children living in this house
10 - the number of times a day I revel in that fact
1 - the number of freckles on Julia's face (near her hairline)
3 - the number of freckles on Sam's face (near his nose, hairline, and jawline)
10,000 - the number of freckles on my body
1 - the number of weddings I've booked for this year so far
2 - the number of books I'm in the middle of reading
20 - the number of books my kids read in a day
40- the number of minutes Sam sat on the couch this morning listening to a book on CD
2 - the number of loaves of bread the kids and I made last week
22 - the number of days until we are hosting a retirement party for Brian's mom at our house - hence...
2 - the number of hours we spent cleaning out the garage on Saturday
3 - the number of hours we spent at our beach on Friday
8:00 the numbers on the clock lately when I get up in the morning
60 - the number of minutes Julia will read books in her crib in the morning
20 - the number of times I run over to the office for park related business in an average week
3 - the number of times I've called the Sheriff's office this month
22 - the number of hours before Brian's mom goes in for knee replacement surgery
5 - the number of weeks before my mom moves an hour and a half away
49 - the number of days until I become an aunt for the first time
3 - the number of picture perfect weekends we've had this summer
40 - the number of fish Sam and Julia caught the other night
1,000 - the number of mosquitoes that attacked us on our hike last week
10 - the number of things I should be doing instead of blogging
1 - the number of tents I'm going to put up in our front yard today
70 - the number of days since I've used cloth diapers (that streak ends today. I cringe just thinking about the number of disposable diapers I've wasted since right before we moved)
54 - the number of days we've lived in this house
8 - the number of boxes I still have left to unpack
0 - the number of things I've put up on the wall in this house
16 - the number of steps Julia just walked down like a big girl
90 - the number of minutes I spent cleaning up after two graduation parties held in the park over the weekend.
countless - the number of snuggles I'm going to go give my kids right now!

Have a great week everyone!

Summer Solstice

Grandpa brought Sam a new fishing pole yesterday and the whole family went down to the lake to watch the kids fish with Grandpa. I can't wait to share the fun shots I got of the excitement.... eventually. For now we're headed to the library for a kids program and then to the beach. I couldn't think of a better way to welcome summer in. Don't worry, I'll be sick of the sun before you know it and be back in the house to post more pictures.

Happy Summer Everyone!

Looks can be deceiving

On first glance life here is relaxing and simple. A hammock I purchased ten years ago in Costa Rica is right at home in our front yard, we've enjoyed more family meals on our porch than inside the house, the kids spend hours outside driving their cozy coupes around the driveway.








We can even walk to campfire programs without leaving home.



In case you are turning green with envy or are about to click over to a different blog because you can't stand my bragging let me assure you that there is more to the story. MUCH more.






Take this picture for instance: Sure, the kids have a big driveway to play in, but it also gets used by huge wedding receptions to park the band's full size semi. The Gator behind Julia is also parked in the driveway because (especially on the weekends) we are constantly running out to the campground. Notice the big black garbage bag in the back of the gator? A camper decided it was too much work to drop the bag off at the dumpster on her way out so I got to retreive it from her site. At least she put her garbage in a bag. The guy at the site next to her left 30 bottles on the ground for me to pick up.

Those types of things I can handle.

Double bookings at the same shelter?

Not so much.
Saturday didn't start off well and it most definitely didn't end well. With one family breathing down my neck I spoke with the other family about their shelter permit. An hour later, both groups were grilling and getting on with their parties. I on the other hand was hustling through the grocery store so I could get back to the office on time for my regularlily scheduled office hours from 1-3 (which usually becomes 1-4).

Now look in the way background of the same photo and you'll see two tents. Up close they look like this:

The bride and groom set these up Saturday morning for their evening reception. All fine and dandy until a storm rolled in and lifts the tents up in the air only to drop them back down on 50 people sipping fruity cocktails. Thank goodness my in laws were here so they could hustle the kids into the house while Brian drove through the campground to check on campers. I ran to the barn to assess the damage. One lady had a bad bruise, but it was the woman on the ground unconscious that got my blood pumping. Four firemen who happened to be attending the wedding took over the first aid while I scrambled to call for an ambulance. It was chaos. I don't know how rescue workers do their jobs day in and day out.
The young lady was transported by ambulance while the other injuries were treated on site. I never did see my kids again that night. Grandma and Grandpa put them to bed while I tried to tame the crowd that got back into the party mode rather quickly after the storm. I was really hoping they'd call it a night so I didn't have to worry about the noise from their live band. The show went on though and donning one of my many hats I wear as part of this gig, I became the Party Pooper when I had to tell the band that the show was over. In a nice way of course. :)

Forty minutes later I mopped the last guest out the door and then spent the next 15 minutes telling them they needed to go back to their campsites or go home. Drunk people are not fun. Calling the Sheriff's office is not fun. Working 14 hours in one day is not fun.

Do I still love it here? You bet I do! (Even after the raw sewage spill I dealt with on Sunday afternoon.) You might have to wait a little longer for me to post anything though because I spend all week recovering from the weekends. That, and I haven't quite perfected the art of blogging from my hammock. I'll get right on that....