Warning: this might be long and contain cursing.

So I have been busy. When am I not? But last week it was one major thing that cause quite a lot of work and a bit of stress on the whole family.

A vacation camping. With pretty much all of Adam's family. 11 children in total. A week. Yup, a whole week.

Can I just say...what the hell is relaxing about camping? Good God. I have told my friends I don't know why it is not called "pack up your whole f-ing house and take it with you" I guess "camping" is shorter and sounds more alluring. I have yet to embrace the sexiness of camping. Maybe someday, like in 2025. And when I get my own personal slave to pack and un-pack for me. Maybe then.

And really, I got off pretty light. I went down to the cabins with Adam on Sunday, but came back home until Thursday morning. Not only did Zach have commitments here, but Sammy had an appointment to get his "real" cast. Being the Children's hospital here is VERY busy, they had only ONE appointment that week. So, I brought Zach and Sammy home for the beginning of the week and left Adam to enjoy a little peace with Josh in the Allegheny mountains. I am not sure he had much "peace" with my nephews and nieces around him, but he at least made the attempt.

And it happened to be a good thing that I was home. My sister-in-law called me on Wed. night to tell me the my 4 month-old niece had seen the cardiologist that morning and was admitted to the ICU at Children's and was going to have open heart surgery the next day. And all the rest of the family was camping almost 2 hours away. So, I gathered up her other daughter, my 6 yr old niece Emily, and took her with me to meet up with the family for the remainder of our vacation. I think it was great for Emily. She rode her bike with her cousins, went to the beach, ate all kinds of junk and enjoyed family time at the campfire. I am glad I was here and got to take her with us for the weekend.

Sleeping is always a problem for me, so I was quite nervous about being away from my bed and the comforts of home. And can I say, sleeping on an air mattress is horrible. I dreamed I was Huck Finn on the Mississippi all night long. I woke up and wanted to know where Injun Joe was taking me. Good God. It is a good thing I function on VERY little sleep.

Lack of running water was my biggest problem. I would have enjoyed it much for if that was not such an issue. I couldn't even get my mind around the difficulty of washing dishes in hot water...after boiling it on the stove. I left that crap to the men. Sammy refused to pee outside stating "Trees are not for peeing on and neither is grass" So when the bath-house closest to us was closed for a back-up (such a gross thought) it was quite the fun to haul my little red-casted baby along the road to the only other bathroom in our section of the mighty forest.

I really did have a nice time with the kids. The place is beautiful. But three days is fantastic, had I been asked to drag it out for a longer, I would have snapped. Enough smores and burgers. I want Thai food and running water.

I did get to take several ( over 400) pictures while I was there for my 3 day trip and I leave you with a montage of the best of them. I think the kids might still be blind from my flash around the fire. Oh well, it is the price for art.


And BTW, my baby niece did AWESOME with the surgery and was home in three days. Frickin' amazing!

I will be back with much more of my summer and craziness but I wanted to get a post out there, before y'all sent out a search party.