Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Loose ends

I realize I kinda left a few cliffhanger posts lately, where I never gave any follow up. Let's try and wrap things up a bit shall we?

The Pathfinder meeting went pretty well last week. None of our little girl guide friends showed up. We had some signals crossed about when exactly they were coming. They will come to the next 2 meetings, and on our hike on Sunday. The pathfinders though learned how to set a table for formal occasions, how to fold fancy napkins in 3 ways, and all the little that I know about flower arranging. I was so grateful to my Nana who made sure that I learned such things. At the time I'm sure I didn't seem very appreciative, but in this day in age where eating out of a plastic tray in front of a television is becoming the new normal, it feels darn good to make sure my 8 girls remember what a real place setting looks like. I also challenged them to set a proper table for mother's day dinner. I've heard back from one girl who said she knocked her mother's socks off. Mommy was so proud. And of course, they all had flower arrangements to take home for a center piece! It was a pricy craft, but one of my favorite ones I've done so far.
Camp this weekend ran SO smoothly, I was amazed. We had one girl who had never spent a night away from her parents, or sleeping outside before. She braved the "wilderness" with us for the first night, and was happy enough to be there all day, but she went home to sleep the second night, then came back to help with pack up Sunday morning. We found a cray fish in the parking lot. There are no streams or rivers anywhere nearby, but hey, there he was. Apparently there it a little stream across the road and back in the woods a bit. Maybe a bird dropped him in our parking lot? He was perfectly intact, aside from missing a leg, and totally dried out. He kinda became the mascot. All of our girls are pretty good cooks, as it turns out, and they were very good about taking turns, and sharing responsibilities. I was very impressed with all of them.

On Sunday Nana and Popa came up for dinner, and my Aunt, Uncle, and three cousins came for a visit. We hadn't seen the oldest cousin since before christmas, so it was really nice to see him doing well. As soon as they left my parents dog was, well, sick as a dog. She spent the remainder of the afternoon barfing up more than I would have guessed could fit in her stomach. Handfuls and handfuls of wood chips. Now, I'm not thinking it's very likely that she suddenly decided to eat the garden mulch, I can't imagine it tastes very good. Much more likely is that she got the hickory chips from the meat smoker somehow. The meat cooks on top of the chips, they would be soaked with grease drippings, and smell just like smoked meat. I might eat them too if I was a dog. Everyone is denying that there were any about for her to find, but the evidence was all over the floor. She barfed it all up, and when it was clear that she was done, I made her up a drink with ginger to settle her stomach. She was shaking, so we swaddled her up like a baby. No, I don't really think that helped her much, but it made us feel better, and she indulges us so well. She's doing just fine now.
Ok, that gets us just about caught up to yesterday. I have one more thing to share, but I think it deserves a separate post. Stay tuned?

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