The dirty, stinky, and possible wet camp report

TRMinator is home from camp!  He and Hubby got home Saturday around noon.  Hubby is the assistant Scout Master for his troop, so he was up there with the T-man for the second half of the week.  They got home tired, dirty, sweaty and stinky, but they had fun.

One of the features of the camp they went to was the horseback riding merit badge.  TRMinator was pretty excited for that one.

He earned 5 other merit badges while he was there, one of which was basket making.

This was my first experience with one of my kids going to an extended Scout camp.  We’ve done day camps in the past but never a week long one.

I’ve learned several things from this experience.  The first is, boys don’t like to shower.  They will only do so when strongly encouraged (forced- however you chose to look at it) to do so.  Second, they don’t really change their clothes.  If they wore it yesterday and to sleep in last night, it’s still good enough for today, right?!  Third, don’t ever wear white shirts.  Because when they come home with at least 2 to 3 days of grime on it like dirt, sweat and fish guts, they don’t really come clean.  Even when you bleach them and run them through the 2 1/2 hour stain cycle on your washing machine.

I must say, I expected TRMinator to be dirty and was prepared for it.  The thing that I didn’t expect to see so dirty was this:

I have never, in the life of that car, seen it that dirty! Hubby could only take it for so long.  He waited till that evening when it cooled off and went out to wash it.

Now here’s where the story takes a bit of a twist, you might say.  It didn’t matter that there were storm clouds in the sky and it looked like it might start raining any minute.  His car was filthy and it had to be cleaned off!

Yep.  He washed his car in the rain.  It wasn’t too bad at first, just a few sprinkles.  When it really started coming down you would think that he would be done.  Nope!!  I sat in the garage and laughed at him while I took pictures to document his insanity for our posterity.

And I thought I had seen it all with the lengths he would go to to keep his car clean.  I was mistaken.

I love it when a deal comes together

I realized the other day that school starts for me in about three weeks (EEEK!!) and that I should try to see if I can figure out what books I need, preferably online. 

I found the bookstore’s website and they had a place where you just put in what class you had, picked your teacher and BAM!!  There’s the books you need with a convenient spot to order them.

I need two books and each one new was $41.  They were out of stock new, but they had used ones available for $33.  I was about ready to order them, when my Amazon buying brain kicked in and I thought, “Hmm… I wonder if I can get these off Amazon?”

I took the ISBN numbers of the books from the bookstore’s website and plugged them into Amazon, and da duh!!  There they were for a fraction of the bookstore’s price!  I got both my books for under $18!  Can I get a “Woot!  Woot!!”

This kind of getting good deals technology wasn’t around the first time I went to school!  I love Amazon.  It rocks.

**Sigh**

TRMinator has been at 12 year old scout camp this week.  He’s technically not old enough, but they are letting him go because his birthday is in less than a month and he is already a First Class Scout. 

He has been looking forward to this for quite awhile now.  He excitedly signed up for the merit badge classes that he wanted to take (horse back riding was one of them) and had his gear packed for several days.

I’m sure he is having a great time and learning a lot.

I’m not!  I miss that kid!

It’s just not the same around here without him.  I miss those big brown eyes and that grin.  G-man has been doing a good job of stepping up and being the big brother and helping when I need him to, but he doesn’t sit down and chat with me the way TRMinator does.  I think I’m ready for my big guy to come home now.  Too bad he’s still got two more days!

That pack is almost as big as him!

Wordless Wednesday

A day at the splash pad

I realized the other day that my two younger kids only have a week and a half left of summer!  It feels like our summer vacation just barely started and now it’s almost over!  So I thought that I needed to get them out of the house and do something fun.  TRMinator is away at scout camp for the week, so I called my mom and we took the remaining two kids to a splash pad in Riverdale.  The splash area itself isn’t that big, but there is a big park with playground equipment surrounding it. 

They went and played on the playground first.

I was really surprised.  I thought the Princess would take to splashing in the water and the G-man would not.  She walked around for about 5 minutes, then wanted to go back to the playground and play.  G-man stayed and played in the water for quite awhile.

Finally the Princess decided the she could go play in the water- when we were about done, so G-man stepped up to the role of big brother.

They had fun.  Now I’m sure we’ll have to go back when TRMinator gets back!

My new toy

I may have mentioned in my last post that I got a new camera.  (Have I said yet that I got a new camera?  I got a new camera! (I don’t think I’m that bad!))  We’ve been taking it out and playing with it to figure out how it works. 

Of course my first subjects were my kids.

Then, we went with my parents to some fireworks at the little town next door to them. 

This was our first shot, just playing with the exposure time.  I thought it was kind of cool.

It was fun playing around and learning the different things we can do.  I’m sure there will be more!  Stay tuned!

What?!?!?!

You may have noticed the box in the left hand corner that says I need to get a new background for my blog… by tomorrow!  Apparently the website that I, and most of my friends, get our backgrounds from, wants everyone to get a new one for some reason. 

Well, I thought, “Pshaw!  My hubby is a software engineer!  He can design me up a new background!  And if he can’t, one of his engineers or techs at work can!  He runs a software company and they even have a website!  For Pete sake, someone there can make me a nice new background!”  Right?!?!!??  Nope.

He says that he’s not going to pull them away from the projects that they are working on to make me a new blog background.  Seriously!!  Where are his priorities?!?  Aren’t I the most important thing in the world??  In his world, yes, but apparently not in the company’s world.  Shocking, I know.  I’m still trying to process it.

He said that I would have to be happy with what he came up with for my blog.  So in other words, expect to see a blank background for awhile.  For some reason, my blog isn’t real high on his priorities.  Again, I’m shocked.  Maybe since I’ve called him out so publically like this he’ll get right on it!  Yeah…. probably not.

In other news, I got my new camera today!!  It’s a DSLR, and for those of you that don’t know what that is, I will write a post later telling you all about it.  I just got it today and I’m still playing with it and learning about it.  The one thing that I will tell you about it now is that it is 18 mega pixels.  18!!!  My old camera is 12, and I thought that was awesome.  I still haven’t pulled the pictures that I’ve taken off yet, (because I’m not sure how) so we’ll see just how much clearer they are.  Expect to see lots of pictures in the near future!  Yay!!!