Monday, August 31, 2009

August Away...

In preparing to make my end-of-the-month post, I realized that as the kids have aged, I seem to take a lot less pictures. Is it because they are both really busy and harder to catch? Is it that we do a lot less 'fun stuff' that is picture worthy? I don't think either is the case. I think that the kids are finally at an age that we play together as a family. Hence, the reason there are so few pictures. I'll take that. After all, what is the saying, "The family that plays together stays together!" Or something like that...

Monday, August 24, 2009

The Fungi of Cackalacky

On a few recent walks around our neighborhood, I started noticing some very beautiful and interesting things growing. I'm not talking flowers or ancient oaks, I'm talking fungus. Or at least I assume it to be fungi of some sort. Just one more proof of the abundant, rich world we live in!

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Another camping weekend...

Last weekend we borrowed the pop up trailer and headed about 60 miles upstate to the Edisto River for a camping trip.

We had a great time, though we did come away with a few stories:

** Our first evening there, we found HUGE (the size of B's thumb) wasps digging holes in our fire pit. The Park Ranger came with spray and gasoline. We had a small fire and figured we'd burned them all out. Not so. We found another hole beside the fire pit. Back came Mr. Park Ranger with his gas can -- and promptly lit half of our campsite on fire when the fumes and ENTIRE gas can caught on fire. Thank God, the fire was put out shortly and all that was lost was two life jackets. It could have been much, much, much worse. Praise God. (We did get some weird stares from other campers -- we thought felt were thinking, "Oh, you are the ONES who tried to burn down the forest!")

** Our second morning, while digging for worms with a canoe paddle, C turned quickly and bopped M in the nose resulting in his first nosebleed. It was a double nostril gusher, but no bones were broken in the making of this memory.

** We met a LOT of "locals" and realized that their accents only get better/worse (depending on who you talk to) with the amount of alcohol consumed. And, apparently to some, it's always 5 o'clock when camping!

We had a great time, spending much of it in the river swimming and canoeing. The river bottom was sandy and the water level was below normal. There were many great sandy beaches and sandbars to swim and wade in. Like I said, we had a great time.