Monster Trucks Take a trip to the BEACH
On the bright and beautiful last Saturday of September, Ernest and grandpa packed a lunch and went to see the wild monster trucks play. These poor creatures yanked from their natural habitat of some indoor super dome frolicked in the soft warm sand. Must have felt nice under their tires. They basked in the Indian Summer sun and filled their engines with the refreshing sea-salt air; while the crowed gather to watch them ooed and awed over their ferocious growling and high leaps in the air. All in all everyone had a good time and the poor monster trucks were taken back to their home.

Street Hockey

So Ernest had his first day of practice and what a beautiful day too. He was soo cute. He complained about his cup because he couldn't put his legs together. For the first 20 minutes of practice the boys just chased the balls around the court and about every 5 minutes Ernest would come over to the box to tell me that he was hot and tired and didn't want to run any more. I told him to hang in there, and eventually when the coaches started doing drills he forgot all about being hot and tired. After practice we took him to Baskin Robins for some icecream before going home.














Ernest sporting his first wound.

Alika up-date!!!


It's been requested. So here is an update on me instead of my son. For those of you who didn't know, I applied for fall semester for the English Grad program at Rutgers in Camden. Studied hard this past summer, took my GRE's, did fairly well -and after all that I did not get in. So instead of cracking open more books this fall, I will be continuing my search for a second job. I will retake the GRE's to see if a better score will change their minds and will be reapplying. Everyone keep your fingers crossed that I find a second job and soon so we can spend Christmas in Minnesota.

FUNNY THING ABOUT THE WEATHER

So Ernest and I got home from camping just in time. As you can see by the pictures below both the East coast and the West coast were being bombarded by my son.

East coast: Hurrican Ernesto /West coast: Hurrican John











How many times in the history of weather will a persons first and middle name be used at the same time to name two differnet storms happening at the same time.

Last Summer Fling!
August 29th - 31st

The last week of August, I decided to take Ernest camping. We did a practice run in the yard the weekend before. Tropical storm Debbie, rained us out -so much so, that I had to throw the tent and sleeping bags in the dryer on air so that the sleeping bags were dry and I could re-waterproof the tent before we actually went on our trip.
Ernest was sooo excited, I can't even begin to describe his excitement. We went to Belleplain state park, because it was close to home (just in case) and they had biking and canoeing available. Monday I started packing the car. Loading in firewood and all the non-essentials first. Of course by doing so, he thought that we were leaving that day and not the next morning.

Tuesday
morning dawned a little gray, but dry with beautiful temperatures. Check-in was noon, so I finished packing the car, there were some minor delays but we finally got on the road. We stopped at the local deli, for some driving goodies and had another delay when I bumped into someone I hadn't seen in a while.
By 12:30 we finally arrived. Ernest crashed, probably from all the excitement. So I let him sleep in the car while I checked in. He continued to sleep while I drove to our camp site and managed with a bit of stealth to set up the tent. He woke up when I tried to sneak the tarp out of the car.
The camp ground was very quiet, with very few campers; it being the middle of the week and with the threat of bad weather. The lack of people was nice -no unwanted noise.
Ernest helped me finish set up, we had lunch, and went on a bike ride. We rode to the two playgrounds that I had seen on the drive in. He played. We rode back. I started to set up the fire for dinner -he immediately wanted to roast marshmallows. I told him that we needed green sticks, so he helped me go on a stick hunt. I cut the fresh sticks and he carried them back to camp.
Grandma and grandpa came and we had chicken hotdogs stuffed with apples cooked over our camp fire. Ernest couldn't wait till everyone was finished to start with the marshmallows.
When everyone was full almost to the point of being sick of smores and fired marshmallows. It started to rain. We crowded under the trees near the fire pit. It was a short rain but it came quick. When it stopped we checked the rain fall pattern to see if it would flood the tent if it rained again. Dad and Deb were getting ready to go, when it started raining again. This time there was lots of thunder and lightning so we put Ernest into the tent. Dad and I rushed around the tent building up mud to form barriers and digging trenches for the water to run away from the tent. The rain didn't last long but dad and I were soaked by the time it stopped.
They bid good-nite, and Ernest and I walked with the lantern to the bathroom, where I washed off the mud and changed into dry cloths. Ernest and I made it back to the tent just as it started to rain again. He curled up next to me so I could protect him from all the thunder noise and fell asleep almost immediately.

Wednesday
morning greated us just as gray with a fine mist that left just enough moisture in the air that the most I could get out of the fire was a steady stream of smoke. Every now and then I managed to coax a steady flame, but nothing that lasted. We had breakfast. Ernest had cerial and I tried the camping omelet receipe that Ladonna e-mailed me. I have to say I think I used the wrong type of zip-lock, because water leaked in so my breakfast had the faint hint of water and plastic -added flavor I guess. Since I had a weak fire going, Ernest demanded that we roast marshmallows once we were done with breakfast. Marshmallows are really way too sweet that early in the morning, but we did it any way. Why not! We were camping after all! After breakfast Ernest and I sat under the umbrella as I desperately tried to save the fire when the overhead clouds decided to spit instead of mist. Ernest came up with a fun activity while we waited for the weather to make up its mind: He turned the umbrella into a tree by placing leaves on the spokes.
Finished with the tree game and the misting done with for the most part, we went for a bike ride around the camp ground. Back at the tent, Ernest played by himself with some sticks. Drawing roads in the wet dirt and other such fun stuff. After lunch we went for another bike ride, this time out to the lake so I could ask about canoeing and then to the Interpretive Center. There were other children there working on crafts, coloring, or just hanging around. The walls were lined with tanks which held locally caught animals: fish, turtles, and snakes. Ernest wasn't interested in making any crafts so we continued our bike tour of the park. We didn't make it far before Ernest said that his bunny missed him. (The bunny that Carli gave him last summer when we were in Minnesota -he absolutely loves it!!!) We rode back to our tent, he climbed in and started playing with bunny. While I played with the fire or to be honest the smoke. I turned on some music with my car radio in the hopes that he would fall asleep. He didn't and after about an hour, he told me that his quiet time was done because bunny had gone to sleep so he could come out. During this time we obtained neighboring campers. To Ernest's surprise, they had two boys: 13 and 11. They invited us over for a game of Uno after dinner.
Once again grandma and grandpa came. We were supposed to go canoeing but when they stopped at the stand at the lake, it was closed, so we had an early dinner instead. Ernest was upset that we couldn't go canoeing and demanded that grandpa take him to the lake. So grandpa drove him there, while Deb and I stayed behind and I vainly tried to pop popcorn over the fire. Quite a while later they finally returned. Grandma and grandpa said good-nite and left. Ernest and I went over to the neighbors and played several rounds of Uno. I won and Ernest won one hand each. He played really well. By a quarter to 9, we thanked them for the game and walked back to our area so we could go to bed.

Thursday
morning greated us with a nice pink blush peaking above the trees. I called dad, so he could come around check out, so we could finally go canoeing. After breakfast Ernest dashed over to the neighbors camp, the boys were still sleeping, but their dad was making pancakes so he offered us one. Ernest and I shared. I convinced Ernest to go for a morning bike ride. By the time we got back the boys were awake and eating breakfast. They thought that our bike was the coolest thing they had ever seen. So I let them try to ride it. I took Ernests tandum attachment off and let the older boy ride it around, with his brother and Ernest chasing him. That gave me time to clean up my site and start to take the tarp and tent down and reload the car. Once I had the tent cleaned out though, I didn't have any work left to do. Between Ernest and the younger boy, they took care of all my polls, helped me fold up the tent, took the ropes off the tarp once I had untied it from the trees. It was kind of nice not having anything to do.
Dad showed up at noon he put the bikes in the back of his truck and took Ernest since I hadn't reorganized the car and still had our clothing bag piled in his carseat. After a slight delay, we finally made it into a canoe and out on the lake. The day turned out to be very beautiful -a bit windy on the lake. Ernest fell asleep on the way home.
All said and done: it was one of the best times I've had camping.