It's good to be home

Just had a wonderful, wonderful camping trip with my homeschooling group at Portola Redwoods State Park. Now that the kids are growing older, we had drama, angst, love, danger -- and not all among the teenagers! For the first time on a camping trip that I can remember, I got to go on a hike. Be very clear, however, I didn't get to go on the planned hike. On that one, Thing 4 dropped off to sleep on the first hill, and I decided not to haul sleeping baby around.

By the time it became clear that she wasn't going to stay asleep if I tried to set her down, the hike had gone on without us. So we followed at a distance. And saw things! A banana slug, a newt, some unidentified (but interesting) scat, a dead mole. . . leaves of Big-leaf Maple . . . redwoods galore. It was awesome, in the nicest possible way.


The children loved the creek, and spent a lot of time getting wet despite the chilly weather. Bug kudos go to my sister and brother in law for supervising my middles so I could watch the little one. They do such a good job of taking care while letting them play, and I usually have no complaints at all.

That said, I did have a minor bone to pick with them when I came back from something (the hike, maybe?) and put down a sleeping baby so I could knit a little bit. I pulled open my bag and found this:


Two library books, some killer hand lotion from my friend, a skein of KnitPicks Merino Style, and a deceased crawfish/crayfish/crawdad. However you name it, it's nasty to find. This was a nice, freshly dead one, and didn't smell or anything.

With my sister's help, I found the culprit and had her carry it back to the stream so the omnipresent omnivores, the raccoons, could eat it there. I didn't think I needed to brown-bag for them. As long as Thing 2 is around, nature comes to me!

I even got to knit a tiny bit. So although I'm not as far along as I'd like to be on the ISP3 scarf, I'm hopeful that I will be done in two weeks, which is my self-imposed deadline. I decided not to get the lifesized banana slug refrigerator magnet to include with it. I think they're an acquired taste, so to speak.

Oh, and today, I made the cutest pair of sweater-arm pants for Thing 4. My sewing machine parts came while we were gone, and it works again! Not enough time for all I want to accomplish, that's for certain.