I Survived...

This past weekend was a study in survival for me. All thoughts of books and edits and scheduling were pushed to the side for three days while I took my boys camping during the GA-SC Scouts annual Spook-R-ee.

Holy crap. What a weekend. I did more on Saturday than I have in years. Helping my kids shoot bee-bee guns, sling shots, bow and arrows, canoeing, you name it, we did it. And all this despite the freezing night prior with shrieking kids and a camp site crammed with tents.

But the highlights of the weekend had to be my son screaming bloody murder that he would NOT enter the Haunted House we waited an hour to see. His screams were better than anything planned, because of the shrill, ear-splitting tonal noises coming from his throat. Good Lord, you'd have thought someone was ripping his toenails off. That loud was the scream.

So we avoided the haunted house. The kids and I still had a ton of fun... until Saturday night, when at 1am, my son had to go to the bathroom. I crept out the sleeping bag to take him to the rest room. We returned to the tent. Where he then moaned and cried because his tooth hurt. Now mind you, voices really carry at night. And I wasn't kidding about our tent being a foot from the ones next to and in front of us. After trying like crazy to get my kid to sleep off the pain, after brushing the offending tooth and seeing nothing there, I grabbed him and my 5 year old, shook them awake, dressed them, and we trudged the half mile back, through the dark, to the car. Yeah, at 2am. Then another hour in the car on the way home, driving slowly for fear of hitting one of the many deer along the way.

A crappy ending to what was a nice start. But all in all, the experience was fun. I made new friends, the kids made new friends, and they went without video games (and me off the computer) for two whole days. A record!

And now, back to my regularly scheduled programming...