Birthday, Gotcha Day, Camping and WAY! more

Wow! Where to start!? Well I guess the beginning is probably a great place, or so the saying goes....

Thursday's mail was left for me on the counter of the kitchen. David always leaves any mail from the schools to us, for me to open. Just irritates the devil out of me. Anyway....
This particular letter was from Liberty where Kristina attends. It states that our daughter, Kristina, has lettered in Academics! How exciting! There will be a semi-formal affair where she, along with the other kids who have lettered, will be presented with their achievements in front of family and friends. How exciting! We're so proud of her. She has worked so hard to achieve this and definitely deserves all the recognition and praise.


Friday after dropping the kids off at school, David and I headed to the "Golden Eagle Campground" to set up the campsite and relax a bit before heading back to get the kids from school. By the time we'd finished it was lunch time and we headed to Culpepper's Cajun Kitchen for lunch. Ohhhh... it was so good. We used to have one up at the north end of town but I guess they just didn't get enough business to keep it going. I was very excited to see that they were still around.

Max and Jake were so good to wait in the car while we had lunch. Of course, for their good behavior, I brought out a bit of my leftovers for them to share.

They each had a few crawfish and a couple of french fries. I promise that the crawfish weren't as spicy as these pictures would have you believe!

We finally arrived back at the house just in time for me to head off to get Kristina from school and get her back to the house so she could finish packing for the weekend. Shortly, I took off again for the younger group and arrived back with them just in time to get the car packed up with all of their stuff and head out with plenty of light left to enjoy the campsite before it got totally dark and to be treated to the sight of a flock of wild turkeys cutting across the field. Because of the no rain/high winds we've been having lately there are "No Campfire" bans in effect. So once it gets really dark we're off to bed. *not to mention that we're completely exhausted anyway*.

Dad did all the cooking this weekend and he really did a great job of it. Everything was basically pre-cooked. So meals went together like a flash and it cut down on what we had to take with us. Good job Honey, you get an "Atta boy!" for that move.

Saturday arrived and we celebrated a "Gotcha day" with Olivia. 10 years ago we were in China being handed our first precious gift. We remember that day as if it were yesterday. We reminisced and then let the games begin. There was kite flying, playing at the playground, running around the lakes, and......

skipping rocks... and....




of course, some relaxing to be had by all!
Then there was more kite flying and...........(insert ominous quiet here)...... just as we were really relaxing........(insert more ominous quiet)................ Olivia started screaming about something stinging and ran towards Kristina who was further into the field to hand her, her kite and then turned around and was headed at us so fast......... * I didn't think it was possible for someone to move that quickly*. By the time she reached David and I it was apparent that she was being swarmed by bees! They were everywhere tangled in her hair! and flying around her! There had to be at least 15 just in her hair! They weren't bees but Wasps! So David, Kristina and I are grabbing these wasps with our hands, pulling them out of her hair and trying to keep the rest of the kids back so that they didn't start getting stung. When this was all said and done she had been stung about 8 or 9 times and our "true good luck" in all this was that the wasps being stuck in her hair kept them from being able to sting her in the face or head. Most of the stings were around the back of her shirt neck line, 1 on her heel and 1 on the back of her leg. David got stung once on the arm, Kristina was once on her hip and I got one in the palm of my hand. So after getting an anti-histamine in her and basically bathing her in hydro-cortizone we all settled down and just relaxed with Olivia sitting in my lap trying to get over the shock of all that had just happened. We shut down early that evening and everyone went to bed exhausted.
Sunday came and with that trying to celebrate Olivia's 11th birthday and better trying figure out where she had come in contact with the wasps. David finally went exploring, ever so gingerly, and discovered the colony of wasps. They had erupted from this hole and we concluded that Olivia while flying her kite must have stepped on the hole or gone to close and these particular wasps being agressive, attacked. So David went and found Carrie's mom (one of the owners of the campground) and told her about the situation. She came to look at the site so that they would know where to spray Sunday evening. Unfortunately she didn't recognize this particular type of wasps. I hope its not a new species for this area that has just moved in!
We arrived home from the campground at about 2 with plenty of time to really celebrate Olivia's birthday by opening presents and ordering Chinese food. One of the things that she asked for, was to go out alone with Mom and Dad for shopping and dinner. So sometime this week we'll be headed out for an evening alone, just the 3 of us.