72 Hours

Sunday night. It's been an intense couple of days, so the girls are all in bed and Suzy and I are sitting here feeling the steam slowly rise off our foreheads.

Friday, Suzy and I spent the day prepping to go on a camping trip with some friends from our former ward. We haven't been camping since Maryn was less than a year old. It was an overnight trip to Massacre Rocks with my brother Jason's family and my parents. Maryn screamed from about 11 p.m. until about 2 or 3 a.m. so it was miserable and we haven't done it since.

So this was our first foray back into the world of wood smoke, Deep Woods Off, and s'mores. My friend's dad is the CIO (Chief Information Officer) for Dow Chemical, and so happens to own about a hundred acres of woods outside of Sanford, Michigan where he's built a pole barn and dining pavilion, a lake, a shooting range, and a camp clearing with four little shed cabins. Every so often, my pal David invites friends from the ward or work or whatever to do a overnight camp out on his dad's property.

So we bought a tent, packed some food and clothes, bought some serious bug spray (apparently, mosquitoes find Suzy absolutely delectable - but then, I know how they feel), and after the girls got home from school, we met up with the other families who were invited and drove out.

It was fun. Everyone got along, there was plenty of food, and the weather was perfect. Parker in particular had the best time. There were plenty of other kids to watch out for her and so she basically got to wander around the clearing with a flashlight and ride the Gators and just have an adventure-a-rama without a ton of parental interference. She was in heaven.

Sleeping in a tent, even on an air mattress, is lame. It's cold, uncomfortable, and you wake up damp no matter what. It's the part I like least about camping. Everything's fine and good until you wake up in the morning and realize you slept like crap and you're stuffed up and moist. If there's a specific reason why I don't like to camp, that's probably it.

Anyway, despite that, we had a good time and Parker had a full-on freak out when it was time to go. She just wants to live at the camp site for the rest of her life, port-a-pottys be darned.

After we got back from camping, we unpacked, cleaned up, and decompressed until it was time to go to the evening session of Stake Conference. The youth of the ward were invited to this meeting so Maryn was coming along. Avery stayed behind and had her first real paying babysitting gig watching three of our neighbor's kids along with Parker while the parents attended conference with us. She managed just fine.

Then today, in the afternoon, we wanted to get out of town (again, I guess), so we took a Sunday drive to Saginaw Bay/Lake Huron and picked up shells and waded in the water for a while. It was powerfully hot but fun to see something new. We haven't been up to that part of the area yet, and I always like seeing new things.

We couldn't stay long, however, because we had been invited to dinner at a member of the Bishopric's house. They're a lovely family with four daughters and a boy, two horses, a dozen chickens, a few pigs, rabbits, newborn kittens, turkeys, and one goat named Gertie. The dinner was nice and they're fun, engaging people to talk to. They lived in Bangkok for a couple of years, he reads a lot of history books, she ran the Boston Marathon while on a break from radiation therapy for breast cancer - they have lots of interesting stories. Once again, getting Parker in the car following a bonanza of fun involving animals and a seemingly endless supply of kids to play with was a chore.

It goes without saying is that, at the end of a day like today, everyone was filthy. Showers for everyone and then bed. I'm sure they're all totally passed out by now because it's been a busy 72 hours, you know? Me? I'm exhausted, but the season premiere of Food Network Star is on tonight and I have to keep my priorities straight. I do have 14 papers left to grade, but there's always tomorrow, right?