Family Journal August 7th
Family Reunion Qualicum Beach Resort
2007
August 7, 2007
Laura
It seemed to take forever to get here yesterday. Martha and I went with Mom. You can imagine how “quickly” Mom left, was persuaded to leave. We kept finding new things to bring, and when the car was finally packed with suitcases, sleeping bags, games and pillows and an open pan of frozen spaghetti (the same pan of spaghetti that Martha had previously threatened to step in)—we left to go. To superstore that is. On the way Mom made me call Dad twice in succession to see if he could remember anything he forgot. “Do you remember now?”, I chirrped the second time. An exasperated Dad told us to stop bugging him. He had to put the canoe down to answer the phone. Mom bought some buns and a watermelon at Superstore and Martha and I waited in the car (my hair was pinned up to dry, so I wasn’t going anywhere public).
When Mom came out with her goods, she was also armed with the realization of forgotten things. So we went back to the house. Roasting pans were piled up beside Martha in the back seat, and Mom collected more tops etc.
Finally on the highway, after a slight detour into Lantzville, we listened to Raffi and dozed. I kept a look out for birds and saw several bald eagles and one hawk-type bird.
When we got here I saw Dad and Uncle Dennis working on the group shelter. I went over to see how it was going and was straightway recruited. They had a framework of some sort up and they were trying to pull a tarp over it. Uncle Dennis gave me a heavy two-by-four with a wedge on the end to lift the tarp up with. Dad and Dennis had ropes to pull the tarp with. “Can’t you just pull the tarp?”, I whined after a couple of goes with the two-by-four. Dad offered to do it if I held the rope he was holding. I thought that made more sense, and gladly traded. That arrangement worked well for a while until Dad, now on another rope, tried tugging the tarp in what turned out to be, too much of a lateral movement. “Don’t let the posts fall!” yelled Dad as they all began to tip. I grabbed one but it was too top heavy and it fell over my shoulder. I was left in a graveyard of fallen posts and tangled tarp holding the bottom of the one I grabbed in the air. Naturally I started inching away at this point. “Laura don’t go anywhere!” Dad called after me. I said I’d be back. I said I had to set up my tent. Mom backed me on this.
Martha and I set up the tent together. WE had a few little problems, but it wasn’t too hard. Tracy helped me with the fly, which was confusing to me, and the poles for it were broken. The poles for this tent are on their last legs. One is duct taped together, and the pieces slip out etc.
We’re sharing our camp site with Katie and Brent. Our tent is closest to the pond and Katie’s is closer to the road. Besides Martha and I, Bethany and Amy are in our tent. In the site right beside us is Ben Shoults’ (Bethany’s fresh fiancé) miniature dome tent (his feet stick out the door when he lays flat) He shares his site with Heather and Dennis’ camper.
That reminds me, this morning at breakfast someone asked Uncle Dennis if Auntie Heather was up yet. “No, she still ahs two snores left.”, replied Uncle Dennis. We were amused. “How long does it take to get a snore out?”, mused Sarah, “20 minutes?”.
Anyways yesterday was nice and sunny and we spent a lot of time setting up this and that. When I finally went back to the group site, Jordan was helping, Kyle was pretending to, but was only practicing his Sears pose, and a drunk guy was holding up a post on the other end. Phew.
Sarah and I decided to take Adriel to the park. On the way we saw Layne and Jen arriving and we stopped to say hello. At this same time Adriel squirmed from Sarah to me, to the ground. He sat down and picked up some gravel happily so I turned to approach the window of Layne’s truck. But then with speed one owould not expect of a toddling one year old, Adriel was up on his feet and heading to the poind. When I saw him I knew he wasn’t going to stop and before I reached him he was tumbling and struggling in the water. I stepped in and reached for him with the hand my camera was in, giving it a baptism by immersion. I couldn’t quite reach him and it was slippery and uneven. I ended up sitting down up to my waist with a shriek, and grabbing the rolling water log that was Adriel. Adriel coughed and spluttered but didn’t cry. Dripping wet and shaking with adrenalin I shook Jen’s hand.
Jordan and Evan say if I dry the camera out before turning it on, it might be ok. I hope so because it’s not my camera.
Dad made a lot of yummy salmon on the bbq for supper.
Michealah and Madelaine showed me and Bethany their play for the talent show. It involved a peanut and it’s really cute. Then we walked across the street to the beach where we met a happy dog named Bear and threw rocks.
On the way back we were told it was time for FHE. Jordan did a fun lesson for the kids about the iron rod. They got blindfolded and had to find Grampa by holding on to a rope. Then they watched a movie while we had a grown-up lesson. Jordan put a lot into it and it was a really nice spiritual time together.
Layne and Jen brought the treat—smors. We roasted marshmallows on the BBQ. Most people went to bed after that but I stayed up and talked with Mom and Layne and Jen and then later Bethany and Ben-aroobi.
Bethany and I shared a scripture with each other in the dark in our tent and talked about faith and many things actually, before we fell asleep.
This morning was cloudy. Dad made us pancakes and eggs.
Martha said John reminds her of Moroni. “Don’t you think he looks like all the Moronis?” she asked. Sigh. I wish they were here.
Tues. Aug. 7
This morning as Grandpa was walking toward the camp Kitchen, Mary, age 4, came and took his hand. She looked up at him and said “Why do you look at me when I’m looking so cute?” “I can’t help it.” Said Grandpa.
Grandma
Tues. Aug 7/07
The twins are twitterpated. This family reunion will be remembered as the one where the twins were twitterpated so much so that their presence seemed scarce. Speaking of twitterpation—Kyle accused Laura and I of being twitterpated when he was arguing with us about me having our car. (This is also the family reunion that Kyle and Evan didn’t come) We asked who we were twitterpated with and he said “Yourselves and eachother.” I’m not so sure he remembered the meaning of the word when he used it.
Sarah
(Adriel interrupted Sarah by falling off the table)—Laura.
Aug. 7th/07
-Laura
Highlights:
1. Mom, Katie, Tracy, Maria, Mary, Madelaine, Michealah, Natalie, Caleb and I all walked down to the beach to collect treasures for one of Mom’s crafts. We each had a ziplock baggie to hold our goods in. Natalie liked the big stuff. Michealah and Madelaine decided to make a fossil from a fish skeleton we found. Caleb was searching for feathers to put on the arrows that he and the boys were making with Dad. Tracy instigated one of her crab races. I realized that Katie also thinks of crabs as “the spiders of the sea”, as she put it. Mary and Maria put some live crabs in their baggies. Later Mary insisted that one of her crabs was “sleeping.”
2. Bethany kept up a steady “When are we going swimming?” chant, so to appease her we went for a dip at Spider Lake. Spider Lake participants: me, Katie, Michealah, Natalie, Madelaine, Sarah and Adriel-baby-of-danger, Bethknee and Ben. It was cloudy and cool but the water was nice. We played around and did 20 strokes out, 20 strokes in. Katie took FOREVER to get in and it was all we could do to keep Bethany in. Bethany the instigater, I might add. By the time Sarah was going in, Adriel had the chills and put his foot down. Sarah was allowed only 1 swift swoop in the water. Ben played with the girls a lot which delighted them. They made a dam up on the beach and then a river going down into the lake.
Bethany didn’t want to change in the outhouse so we volunteered to hold towels around her. I suggested we enact the scene from Little Women and sing For the Beauty of the Earth while we walked around her with the towels. Then Katie had the genius idea to suddenly crouch down, thereby exposing Bethany on the words “Earth” and “sky”. Sarah and I caught on to this so quickly that Bethany thought we did it as one, as if on cue. For some reason Bethany had this idea that we were longing for a peek at her bare bod. A nervous wreck changing in the triangle of 3 towels and 3 sisters having some good laughs.
3. Phase 10—Jordan and Tracy wanted to play games and we decided on phase 10. Mom, Martha, and Ben started out but Martha left and Dad joined us. Then Jordan and Tracy took Maria to bed and that left the 4 of us in a marathon game. I was on phase 3 for a looong time and was behind but basically I had a great come back and won in the end. We all liked to skip Ben who said he was peace loving but vengeful. Mom liked to stop people who had just sat out a round from being skipped and tell them they were skipped. Dad took Tracy’s skip personally.
Aug 7/07 Martha
(Muff duff)
The best part of today for me was going on a walk with Dad and Katie. I was feeling really down because I missed my kids so much but they managed to lift my spirits. We climbed up a look-out and had a nice view of the ocean. Then Dad went barging into the forest (the way he used to barge into our rooms growing up) and Katie and I didn’t really want to follow him because there was no trail.
After that Dad took Laura and I to buy chocolate because I had been asking for it all along. Sarah ended up with the biggest bar, but I think that is because she’s doing such an awesome job with a difficult baby (Adriel) with no Kyle around. And Dad really got the most but that ‘s just because he’s a pig.
Aug. 7/07
Laura
There seems to be 2 or 3 ferral kittens living here. Since I’ve been left alone, they’ve come out, scouring our area, but they’re very jumpy. I have only to turn my head and they’ll slink down and freeze on the spot.
2007
August 7, 2007
Laura
It seemed to take forever to get here yesterday. Martha and I went with Mom. You can imagine how “quickly” Mom left, was persuaded to leave. We kept finding new things to bring, and when the car was finally packed with suitcases, sleeping bags, games and pillows and an open pan of frozen spaghetti (the same pan of spaghetti that Martha had previously threatened to step in)—we left to go. To superstore that is. On the way Mom made me call Dad twice in succession to see if he could remember anything he forgot. “Do you remember now?”, I chirrped the second time. An exasperated Dad told us to stop bugging him. He had to put the canoe down to answer the phone. Mom bought some buns and a watermelon at Superstore and Martha and I waited in the car (my hair was pinned up to dry, so I wasn’t going anywhere public).
When Mom came out with her goods, she was also armed with the realization of forgotten things. So we went back to the house. Roasting pans were piled up beside Martha in the back seat, and Mom collected more tops etc.
Finally on the highway, after a slight detour into Lantzville, we listened to Raffi and dozed. I kept a look out for birds and saw several bald eagles and one hawk-type bird.
When we got here I saw Dad and Uncle Dennis working on the group shelter. I went over to see how it was going and was straightway recruited. They had a framework of some sort up and they were trying to pull a tarp over it. Uncle Dennis gave me a heavy two-by-four with a wedge on the end to lift the tarp up with. Dad and Dennis had ropes to pull the tarp with. “Can’t you just pull the tarp?”, I whined after a couple of goes with the two-by-four. Dad offered to do it if I held the rope he was holding. I thought that made more sense, and gladly traded. That arrangement worked well for a while until Dad, now on another rope, tried tugging the tarp in what turned out to be, too much of a lateral movement. “Don’t let the posts fall!” yelled Dad as they all began to tip. I grabbed one but it was too top heavy and it fell over my shoulder. I was left in a graveyard of fallen posts and tangled tarp holding the bottom of the one I grabbed in the air. Naturally I started inching away at this point. “Laura don’t go anywhere!” Dad called after me. I said I’d be back. I said I had to set up my tent. Mom backed me on this.
Martha and I set up the tent together. WE had a few little problems, but it wasn’t too hard. Tracy helped me with the fly, which was confusing to me, and the poles for it were broken. The poles for this tent are on their last legs. One is duct taped together, and the pieces slip out etc.
We’re sharing our camp site with Katie and Brent. Our tent is closest to the pond and Katie’s is closer to the road. Besides Martha and I, Bethany and Amy are in our tent. In the site right beside us is Ben Shoults’ (Bethany’s fresh fiancé) miniature dome tent (his feet stick out the door when he lays flat) He shares his site with Heather and Dennis’ camper.
That reminds me, this morning at breakfast someone asked Uncle Dennis if Auntie Heather was up yet. “No, she still ahs two snores left.”, replied Uncle Dennis. We were amused. “How long does it take to get a snore out?”, mused Sarah, “20 minutes?”.
Anyways yesterday was nice and sunny and we spent a lot of time setting up this and that. When I finally went back to the group site, Jordan was helping, Kyle was pretending to, but was only practicing his Sears pose, and a drunk guy was holding up a post on the other end. Phew.
Sarah and I decided to take Adriel to the park. On the way we saw Layne and Jen arriving and we stopped to say hello. At this same time Adriel squirmed from Sarah to me, to the ground. He sat down and picked up some gravel happily so I turned to approach the window of Layne’s truck. But then with speed one owould not expect of a toddling one year old, Adriel was up on his feet and heading to the poind. When I saw him I knew he wasn’t going to stop and before I reached him he was tumbling and struggling in the water. I stepped in and reached for him with the hand my camera was in, giving it a baptism by immersion. I couldn’t quite reach him and it was slippery and uneven. I ended up sitting down up to my waist with a shriek, and grabbing the rolling water log that was Adriel. Adriel coughed and spluttered but didn’t cry. Dripping wet and shaking with adrenalin I shook Jen’s hand.
Jordan and Evan say if I dry the camera out before turning it on, it might be ok. I hope so because it’s not my camera.
Dad made a lot of yummy salmon on the bbq for supper.
Michealah and Madelaine showed me and Bethany their play for the talent show. It involved a peanut and it’s really cute. Then we walked across the street to the beach where we met a happy dog named Bear and threw rocks.
On the way back we were told it was time for FHE. Jordan did a fun lesson for the kids about the iron rod. They got blindfolded and had to find Grampa by holding on to a rope. Then they watched a movie while we had a grown-up lesson. Jordan put a lot into it and it was a really nice spiritual time together.
Layne and Jen brought the treat—smors. We roasted marshmallows on the BBQ. Most people went to bed after that but I stayed up and talked with Mom and Layne and Jen and then later Bethany and Ben-aroobi.
Bethany and I shared a scripture with each other in the dark in our tent and talked about faith and many things actually, before we fell asleep.
This morning was cloudy. Dad made us pancakes and eggs.
Martha said John reminds her of Moroni. “Don’t you think he looks like all the Moronis?” she asked. Sigh. I wish they were here.
Tues. Aug. 7
This morning as Grandpa was walking toward the camp Kitchen, Mary, age 4, came and took his hand. She looked up at him and said “Why do you look at me when I’m looking so cute?” “I can’t help it.” Said Grandpa.
Grandma
Tues. Aug 7/07
The twins are twitterpated. This family reunion will be remembered as the one where the twins were twitterpated so much so that their presence seemed scarce. Speaking of twitterpation—Kyle accused Laura and I of being twitterpated when he was arguing with us about me having our car. (This is also the family reunion that Kyle and Evan didn’t come) We asked who we were twitterpated with and he said “Yourselves and eachother.” I’m not so sure he remembered the meaning of the word when he used it.
Sarah
(Adriel interrupted Sarah by falling off the table)—Laura.
Aug. 7th/07
-Laura
Highlights:
1. Mom, Katie, Tracy, Maria, Mary, Madelaine, Michealah, Natalie, Caleb and I all walked down to the beach to collect treasures for one of Mom’s crafts. We each had a ziplock baggie to hold our goods in. Natalie liked the big stuff. Michealah and Madelaine decided to make a fossil from a fish skeleton we found. Caleb was searching for feathers to put on the arrows that he and the boys were making with Dad. Tracy instigated one of her crab races. I realized that Katie also thinks of crabs as “the spiders of the sea”, as she put it. Mary and Maria put some live crabs in their baggies. Later Mary insisted that one of her crabs was “sleeping.”
2. Bethany kept up a steady “When are we going swimming?” chant, so to appease her we went for a dip at Spider Lake. Spider Lake participants: me, Katie, Michealah, Natalie, Madelaine, Sarah and Adriel-baby-of-danger, Bethknee and Ben. It was cloudy and cool but the water was nice. We played around and did 20 strokes out, 20 strokes in. Katie took FOREVER to get in and it was all we could do to keep Bethany in. Bethany the instigater, I might add. By the time Sarah was going in, Adriel had the chills and put his foot down. Sarah was allowed only 1 swift swoop in the water. Ben played with the girls a lot which delighted them. They made a dam up on the beach and then a river going down into the lake.
Bethany didn’t want to change in the outhouse so we volunteered to hold towels around her. I suggested we enact the scene from Little Women and sing For the Beauty of the Earth while we walked around her with the towels. Then Katie had the genius idea to suddenly crouch down, thereby exposing Bethany on the words “Earth” and “sky”. Sarah and I caught on to this so quickly that Bethany thought we did it as one, as if on cue. For some reason Bethany had this idea that we were longing for a peek at her bare bod. A nervous wreck changing in the triangle of 3 towels and 3 sisters having some good laughs.
3. Phase 10—Jordan and Tracy wanted to play games and we decided on phase 10. Mom, Martha, and Ben started out but Martha left and Dad joined us. Then Jordan and Tracy took Maria to bed and that left the 4 of us in a marathon game. I was on phase 3 for a looong time and was behind but basically I had a great come back and won in the end. We all liked to skip Ben who said he was peace loving but vengeful. Mom liked to stop people who had just sat out a round from being skipped and tell them they were skipped. Dad took Tracy’s skip personally.
Aug 7/07 Martha
(Muff duff)
The best part of today for me was going on a walk with Dad and Katie. I was feeling really down because I missed my kids so much but they managed to lift my spirits. We climbed up a look-out and had a nice view of the ocean. Then Dad went barging into the forest (the way he used to barge into our rooms growing up) and Katie and I didn’t really want to follow him because there was no trail.
After that Dad took Laura and I to buy chocolate because I had been asking for it all along. Sarah ended up with the biggest bar, but I think that is because she’s doing such an awesome job with a difficult baby (Adriel) with no Kyle around. And Dad really got the most but that ‘s just because he’s a pig.
Aug. 7/07
Laura
There seems to be 2 or 3 ferral kittens living here. Since I’ve been left alone, they’ve come out, scouring our area, but they’re very jumpy. I have only to turn my head and they’ll slink down and freeze on the spot.
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