Home Early!!

Yes, I came home a day early...I love camping and always have, but this time it seemed harder...maybe I am just getting older? Can't be that...I am still young...Oh well.

We actually had a great time. It was nice last weekend to visit with some family members at Bon Echo Campground, up towards Ottawa way. We haven't seen this part of the family, kids and all, for a while now. It was a nice time.

They all went home, except for my aunt and uncle and one cousin (same age as our kids). We stayed for an extra week. It was full of fun and excitement had by all. We enjoyed campfires and good food (mental note: freezing meals like lazy lasagna and chili and stewed chicken make for easy meals and styrofoam dishes make for little cleanup!!).

There were all kinds of educational (but don't tell the kids) programs that we went to, a really nice beach with a wonderfully shallow lake, and hardly any campers cause it was during the week. Pooky really took a liking to dogs this week and made friends with 4 of them.

I also learned, however, that I really miss having hubby with me when we camp. I was there with my mom and 6 kids, and sleeping was non-existent with Pooky. She insisted on sleeping on me, her cheek on my cheek and her arm wrapped around my neck, every single night. When she moved and rolled around she made sure that I moved with her, or she would scream. When she woke up screaming Mr. Hockey would sit straight up and babble on about what was wrong, what was happening...these were my nights.

Then the nights started to turn cold.oh.so.cold. It got down to 5 degrees one night. I don't mind camping in the cold, when we are prepared for that. I really did not think it would get that cold, but it did and we were cold. My mom started to feel sick, one night Princess puked, in the tent, Pooky has a horrible cough and we thought it would be better to just come home today and end on a relatively good note, since the rain was on its way!

That is why we are home early.

We did have a nice time there. We went to the kids program every morning at 11 and came back and had lunch. We learned about wolves, coyotes, loggers, rodents, and other fun stuff related to the area. The people who work in this park are so passionate about what they do that the kids and adults just get sucked into the learning, it was so much fun to go.

We took a ferry ride around the lake and saw a bunch of native pictographs, which were very cool to see. The kids thought it was neat to see pictures on the cliff walls that were painted on a long time ago (I don't remember how long) by natives. There was another ferry called the "Mugwump Ferry" that we could have taken to climb to the top of the cliff, but that is not my cuppa tea. However, when I saw the name of the ferry I immediately thought about MugwumpMom (the blogging addiction comes into play here!). I even stopped to take a picture of it as funny proof that I think about blogging friends alot of the time!!

The day that Princess was sick, I believe she just had too much sugar. Puking is something that Hubby has always had the priviledge of taking care of that stuff at home. My stomach usually can't handle it, but I got to deal with it this time. After campfire, when everyone was heading to bed, she informed me that she was going to be sick. She was holding it back, not wanting to throw up. We just let her sit in her chair outside for a while, then decided to move the chair into the tent and bring in a bag. YUCK!!! I did not sleep much that night. She was fine for the rest of the week.

We found out that Mr. Hockey is not allergice to wasp stings. He was stung yesterday. His whole arm started to turn red from his wrist to his elbow so my mom took him down to the main office to ask them what to do (I have never dealt with a kid getting stung). He had reacted one year to a bite of some kind really badly. His whole foot had swollen so big that his show wouldn't go on, so I was worred a bit. The office staff told my mom to take him into town to the clinic and if they weren't opened to take him to the hospital, an hour away. They drove to town and they said he seemed fine, just to keep an eye on him for the rest of the day...and what kind of campers don't bring Benadryl with them to go camping??? I guess we won't forget that again!

I am happy to be home. I am happy to get back to our normal. I am happy to catch up on everyones bloglives. I am happy to start thinking about "not back to school". I will leave that post for tomorrow.

We have a week to relax and unwind before I think about anything else really productive!! It is good to be home!!!!