Our Fake Camping Trip

We spent the weekend at Vogel State Park, near Blairsville, GA, thanks to my in-laws, who brought their camper and rented a cabin for us. I would barely be up for "real camping" under any circumstances, and there is no way I would even consider it with three small children.

Here's Rachael playing miniature golf. It was the girls' first time playing and they loved it. It was, um, interesting watching them play, as they had no qualms about either picking the ball up, or just sort of pushing it along with their club.

I believe the girls said that Rachael was the Marshmallow Queen and Rebecca was the Marshmallow Princess. They made so many S'mores we couldn't eat them all.

Robert and I went for a hike around the lake.

Everybody loved the beach. I finally had to bribe the kids with chocolate to get them to go back to the cabin with me.

Rocking Horse Beans!

When Robert was little, he loved his rocking horse so much that he used to fall asleep on it! So his parents wanted to get us a horse for Baby Ben. And of course the girls had to test drive it for him first.

First, big sister Rachael, age six:








Here's Rebecca, age 4:











And here's Baby Ben! (16 months)

We bought a steam vac just in time!

This would have been funny if I were, say, watching in on TV instead of living it.

Saturday evening I went to a free outdoor concert behind the Art Place with Rachael. A friend that we were sitting with offered me both a Milano cookie and some hummus, which are two things I normally love, but for odd reason I frowned slightly and said no thanks. "I must have had a big dinner," I said. "I'm just not hungry."

That night at around 11:30 pm I woke up and tossed my cookies.

A few hours later I heard the same lovely sounds coming from my husband Robert.

And again. Me.

And again. Him.

And it's hard to remember much of anything after that ... I felt so horrible I could barely talk or get out of bed. I remember feeling like I wished I could die, I felt so awful.

I know my mother came over to watch the baby while my dad took the girls to his house.
I remember having a temperature of 100.4.

Then ... I remember being told that Rebecca had started throwing up repeatedly at my dad's house, at which point the girls came back home.

At one point I remember lying in bed while Robert suddenly went running to the bathroom holding Rebecca and saying to her, "Get Doggie out of the way!"

Then ... a little while later I heard more hurling coming from the girls' room, followed by someone's voice saying, "Oh, now Rachael's throwing up!"

By some miracle we managed to get everybody, including the baby, in bed for the night by about seven. Rebecca only threw up once in the middle of the night.

Today we are much better. As usual, the kids have more energy than we do. The temperatures and hurling has thankfully stopped, but now we feel ... weak. Robert weighed himself and said he lost six pounds.

Parenting According to Baby Blues

Yup. I've always really liked comic strip books.

Some of my earliest memories were buying cheap paperback Peanuts books at the book fair in my elementary school in New Jersey.

In college, I often spent Saturday nights alone in my dorm room with a package of cookies and a Cathy book. (Yes, I know, how sad is that?)

Big big fan of Bloom County when I was teenager. Calvin and Hobbes. Early Dilbert! More recently, Baby Blues.

Well about an hour ago I suddenly had an interesting idea ...

Back in the 60's a minister named Robert L. Short traveled around doing seminars of Bible lessons using Peanuts strips as the basis. He is Very Cool. He also wrote at least two books:

The Gospel According to Peanuts
http://www.amazon.com/Gospel-According-Peanuts/dp/0664222226/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-4314719-3811812?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188758949&sr=1-2

The Parables of Peanuts
http://www.amazon.com/Parables-Peanuts-Robert-L-Short/dp/0060011610/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-4314719-3811812?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188759005&sr=1-1

Well.

It ocurred to me that, often when I read Baby Blues, I'll actually analyze it and think, "See, the parents should have done this differently ..." or "That's not the right attitude, because ..."

So later this week I am going to try a little column here called "Parenting According to Baby Blues," where I post a strip and then make a Deep (or not-so-deep) point about it.

Stay tuned ...

Look what Aunt Donna gave us!

Having a blog is already paying off!

Aunt Donna read that we wanted a digital camera ... so she bought us one! Here's some samples of what we've done so far:

Sisters - Rachael and Rebecca!

Rebecca peeking into Baby Ben's crib

Baby Ben!

Rachael thought it was very very funny that she took this picture off the TV set. Can anyone recognize it?