#toolegitauntcamp2020 day 2--silly day

i woke up at 7.  the deep green of the forest was glazed with mist.  it was beautiful.  i lay in a bed for a while looking out the windows at the wisping woods and thinking thoughts before rolling over to have a scripture studay time.  there's no reception at china beach so there's no early morning instagram scroll.  i didn't really miss it.

it was colder at night than i thought it would be.  i had made my bed with many options.  option 1: hot night=sheets. i lay them out in a line.  behind that was option 2: cool moments = fuzzy brown lap blanket at the ready. and the last option was laid out in a line behind that 3. cold night = duvet. i started with option 1 but during the night progressed to a combination of all the options. 

eventually i opened the side door, swung my swollen legs out and touched bare foot to earth.  i shuffled around and looked at the camp. it must have rained.  everything was wet.   i set about soaking up the pools with my bounty of paper towel.  i put my notebook (travel log) in the car to dry.  once the table was all dry i went down to pee and took all our water bottles with me to catch my pee.  just kidding. i left them at the water station and went on to the outhouse.  

the outhouse at china beach was pretty fantastic for an outhouse. it was wide and spacious, clean, and did not really smell.  it had hooks for hanging stuff, and hand sanitizer.  i just want you to feel the blessing of a nice outhouse.  

anyways i came back and filled up the water bottles.  adriel couldn't find his water bottle from the start of camp and was using one of my pink ones.  jane and sloan had the same kind of tall costco metal bottle.  they clanged like bells as i walked them back to camp.

a voice emerges from the tent. "aunty laura?" "yes?" "are you making that noise to wake us up?".  it was sloan.  "no, " i laughed.  but after that the tent became conversational.  mostly they were telling each other their dreams. i busied myself with reorganizing the food bins so i could use one of them as a dish bin.

teens n tween emerge from tent. 

jane starts making her pancake batter in 2 ziplock bags.  "my mom thought you'd have a bowl aunty, but..."  no such luxurious item such as a mixing bowl made it to aunt camp 2020 but jane was good natured about it and mixed a big bag full, only spilling it in a big slosh on the ground once or twice.  some time in here is when adriel makes a remark about what a big batch of pancake batter it is and jane makes it known to adriel that her mom said he eats like a cow.  an off the cuff which adriel then takes quite to heart.  "JANE!! I DO NOT EAT LIKE A COW!!" is an outburst oft heard at auntcamp2020 and all references to cows are quite suddenly taboo--which only makes it more delicious to jane and sloan.

meanwhile sloan made more bacon.  if there was anything we had a plethora of--it was bacon.  the first pancakes were a bit burned but that's kind of a first pancake thing. jane's pancakes were deluxe because they had sour cream in them which makes them tender like my heart.  instead of syrup she brought sugar which we then re-named syrup. she had a big slab of butter and she instructed me to pick up the whole slab and smear it on the warm pancakes which i did.  then one sprinkles with 'syrup' then one eats it and it is good.

also jane and i discover that we share an aversion to unmelted butter.

adriel and i were sitting on the same bench at breakfast.  we face each other and touch foreheads so that to our vision each of us only has one eye.  no one knows why we do this but sloan and jane on the facing bench follow suit.  i burped and blew it at adriel.  he burped and blew it at me.  and in a stroke of gross genius i sucked it up, which made us laugh a lot and we did it quite often.  except jane.  she was like ,"ew." and she was right.

we instituted the group hug formation.  adriel and i straddle the bench facing each other, i snatch sloan and shove him into position in front of me and then we cajole jane to join us "put your butt in the hole!" we say.  or "there's your butt hole jane".  there's a small bench spot for her to sit in.  then i instructed jane to put her arm around adriel and sloan, sloan around jane, and adriel and i around each other and then we squish in.  hard.  many bones are crushed.  many laughs and groans.  personally, i had sloan's face imprinted into my arm pit on many an occasion.  the group hug is a useful reset button when camp angst is building.  sometimes we do it twice in a row. sometimes we say "sure do love ya!"

i heated some water for the dishes.  i decided i would do the dishes and just have the kid responsible for the meal help with a few cleaning things.  i didn't add any cool water to the dishes and it was super hot.  we started the finger dip challenge.  put your finger tip in the water and hold it there as long as you can.  adriel won the challenge with 10 seconds but pretty much scalded his finger in doing so.  i couldn't last longer than 5 seconds.

jane had the morning devotional.  she shared the scripture in 1nephi 2:9-10 when lehi is saying to laman and lemuel that he wished they were like a river, continually running towards righteousness, and like the valley firm and steadfast. we talked about why he would choose river and what it meant.

we retired to the game table and played telephone pictionary.  i feel like there were a lot where adriel was a 'sexy hype beast', in his own words.  then we played consequences.  it was revealed that sloan had a fixation with nudity as almost every single thing he wrote was nudity based.  newdie. 

after these hilarities there was a need to do something physically active.  we decided to play camouflage. this was a new game to me.  basically the one who is it stands in one spot, closes their eyes and counts to 20.  everyone runs and hides.  after counting the 'it' person opens their eyes and looks for the hiders but can't leave the spot they are in.  if they can't see anyone they call "water for five!" and hold out their hand with their eyes closed and everyone has to run out of their hiding spots and hit 'its' hand and hide again before he counts to 5.  i personally laughed so hard during this game.  i did a lot of silly things as i do.  one time i hid in the open pretending to be a tree.  another time i hid by laying on the picnic table bench.  when i was it i said things like "butt for 10" and stuck my butt out, and they had to smack it, or "big toe for 2!" when i said that one i heard sloan running out of his spot laughing his head off.  but my favourite move was when adriel was it.  as he was counting i came up behind him and wrapped my arms around him and hugged him tight.  i could feel his body shaking with silent laughs as he attempted to keep counting.  i laughed so hard with that one, i don't know why.  one time when sloan was it adriel ran up behind him and tried scooping him up by driving his head between his legs and up like a shoulder ride.  but sloan lurched forward as one would and they both biffed it onto the ground. adriel had a sore neck the rest of the camp. another time when adriel was it, jane and sloan body slammed each other on their cross path routes and then jane veered to avoid the fire pit and slammed to the earth like a felled tree.  we had a first aid break then because she scraped up her knee good.  there were some tears but sloan was sent for her first aid kit and applying  the foams and bandaids and giving commands seemed to lift her spirits and we continued with the game.  tragically her leggings did sustain lasting damage in the form of tears at the knee.  

at some point we had to quit camoflauge when it just dissolved into utter chaos and silliness. we decided to play skip bo. but this is no regular skip bo.  this is dynamic skip bo with the following rules.  if anyone had the following numbers flipped up on their stack, the following actions must be performed: 6= everyone dance until the end of the song (adriel had his music playing. "aunty laura have you ever heard of a band called fountains of wayne?") 9=everyone leave their hand and rotate one spot to the right, 5= wild repetitive high fiving. jane's high fives were deadly blows to one's arms and wrists. 12= everyone must do head bops until that card is gone from the stack.  it was fun.  jane was always doing sneaky things to get more wild cards.  i won.

we ate snacks.  we were rich in snacks.  we had sour patch and sour mangos and chocolate covered blue berries and acai.

i had very sore knees and uncomfy legs so i made the decision to have a day off from the beach.  but the sun had come out and i sent the kids for a quick beach jaunt while i made lunch. i made lunch pretty quick.  it was smokies and mrs vickies salt n vinegar chips.  i sliced the smokies in half and fried them on the grill.  i piled them up on the cutting board and kept the lid over them to keep them warm.  i had 2 dogs and chips, then climbed into sahib for a little lie down.  

 eventually the kids came back. sloan challenged adriel to go the rest of camp time without shoes and promised him 5 dollars.  adriel took the challenge. the first thing he told me was that he counted the steps back from the camp and that it was one thousand seven hundred steps. "some people would say that as seventeen hundred" i said.  that became a thing.  they had lunch.  sloan ate his smokies without the buns.  then they had a surprise for me.  they took my selfie stick and made a documentary for me of their trip.  it was cute and funny and it had the catch phrase "wise words from jane" which sloan always said.  we hung out for a while in the car.  then adriel and jane had teen naps in the tent.  sloan and i hung out by the fire ring on the damp camping chairs.

i had a rule about non food things being on the picnic table.  things like gross wet socks and towels and discarded clothes.  i did not allow it.  started out just by asking the person in ownership of said item to take care of it. then i started throwing the things at the tent.  this gave me great satisfaction.  especially the socks.  and jane's razor and shampoo which i gave her 2 or 3 times only to find it in the spot that i gave it to her.  so when sloan was gone to the washroom i threw the razor and shampoo at the tent and enjoyed hearing their startled sleepy "wth??" and so then i threw other things at the tent like small stones, and maybe a stick.  it was a wonderful release.

there are only 2 camp chairs.  i make the cooler my seat and the blue bin is the 4th seat and is from now on known as "the blewb".  it is the least favoured seat.  but we now had 4 seats.  when the teens got up we played some crazy versions of "simon says" where i get them to do any number of things.  we also played upset the fruit basket.  i was mangosteen (amy got us a mangosteen and i forgot to mention it! so exotic and sumptuous!) janel was mango, sloan was grapes and adriel was peenaplay (pineapple) ... i always tried to get back to the cooler, so i'd just stand by that spot until that person had to move. hehe.

sloan warmed up his chili and we had it with fritohs and cheese.  it was really good.  we tried to have a campfire with our one little log and a partially burnt log that the kids found right by our camp, but we only produced smoke.  we sang some songs.  fish n chips n vinegar, quater master store and 2 i didn't know, one is a about a shoe...another about a rattlin tree or something. at some point jane in her enthusiasm hit my bad knee making me gun shy about all her wild gestures and movements.  

and that was our day 2. they all went to bed and i cleaned up the camp and put the food in the car and climbed in myself.