Maine-what a lovely, friendly place. We had a fantastic time! We tented at a campground and had a beach site on the lake. This is the view we saw every morning:
The kids did a lot of kayaking and canoeing over to an island on the lake and found wild blueberries. The lake is really big, but I couldn't get a pic that showed it all!
The kids played until they dropped. We all biked, swam, fished, kayaked, canoed, bought fresh "lobsta" twice and cooked it at our campsite and ate with friends. They taught us the correct way to cook it steamed in beer-not boiled, get the meat out and eat it. They wanted us to do it the "Mainer" way. LOL I couldn't suck the legs, though, or drink the lobster juice out of the claws or eat the green stuff(tamale). Our friend, Drew, uses his teeth, not crackers or scissors to get all the meat out!
One night while eating lobster, the fire smoke kept blowing towards the table. Drew asked Hannah if she'd go to the camp store to get a left-handed smoke shifter--and she did!! LOL Meanwhile, we moved the table, but Hannah came back, realizing the joke had been on her. She thought it was pretty funny and so did the lady at the camp store.
Drew said next year he's going to send her for a bacon stretcher. LOL He's in charge of the kids' activities at the camp. He & Susie have kids that our kids made friends with last year and we all kept in touch.
Since we moved the table, I tripped on a tent rope with a plate of hot lobster in my hands and went flying face first. My dh got up right away to help me, but after inspecting my ankle rope burns, he had a good laugh because I apparently raised quite a cloud of sand dust. I also sent some lobster flying and a piece landed right down the front our friend's teenager dd's bathing suit-landing in her cleavage.
I love camp life-everything about it-making coffee with the percolator, the morning walk to the camp store to get more ice and the free newspaper, swimming at 8am, biking or walking to get places, visiting with the other campers, nightly campfires, etc. My dh is very social and between him and our kids, I think we met about 3/4 of the campground.
The people next to us were potato farmers in Northern Maine. Ward & Pat hit it off and they played in the water with all the kids that came to our site for hours at a time-throwing the frisbee, having water gun fights, tipping Pat out of the Kayake-the kids loved that the best!
I was once the victim of the biggest kid (Pat) there when he had the water gun. I was onshore reading a HS magazine and he soaked me with that gun-it goes 70 feet. I had to hang my magazine on the line to dry.
We had so many kids at our campsite-one time I counted 12 bikes parked at our site. Our kids played at other campsites, too.
Here's a pic of our campsite-we set it up this way last year,too.
We met 3 really great homeschool families and got their addresses, etc. Jonah played with their boys quite a bit. One of them, James (4) had a little conversation with Pat that we enjoyed very much. Here it is:
"We have a tent sort of like yours, but it's blue with a grey floor and has 3 doors. One of them we call the secret door, but we NEVER EVER keep secrets, but we call it the secret door anyway." He was SO cute.
Jonah was a frequent patron at the camp store. Both kids had saved money for the store and we let them use it the way they wanted this year. Jonah bought candy & ice cream for himself and all his friends, a birthday present for his friend, Henry and he bought a present for me, too-a can opener, so I never have to worry about forgetting the can opener again. I did remember it, but now, he says we can keep his in the camp box forever. It was so cute and the camp store lady asked Pat my reaction to that. She said she'd never seen a kid use his own money to do that before.
Hannah sang by herself on Kareoke night-that was really cute. She loved it so much, she did it two more times, singing with her friends.
We did have to deal with something I really would have liked to pass on. One of the girls Hannah played with had lice-discovered while I was in charge of her for the afternoon as her mom had to run in to town and wouldn't be back for a few hours. So, after calling her to let her know, I combed her hair with olive oil in it. I did the best I could with it-she had the worst case I had ever seen. Pat drove in to Walmart to get a good comb and then I did all of our heads and Pat did mine to make sure we were lice-free. We did that again a couple days later. We've dealt with lice before, Thank the Lord, other wise I would have been flipping out instead of being calm and matter of fact.
Jonah spent the whole week in his bathing suit-no showers and only brushed his teeth when forced. He was constantly on the go. Susanna was such a happy little camper-she napped and went to bed great in the portacrib. She hardly fussed the whole week. She loves being outside. I was very glad that she was afraid of the steep decline to get to the lake. She never even tried to get near the water on her own. Once she was at the water, she was very brave, though! The only worry I had with her was the fire every night. We drew a circle in the sand around the fire and taught her to stay outside of the circle. That worked really well.
Pat got a little bored in the middle of the week, but he worked that out by splitting wood for a couple of friends he made that are older and are seasonal campers. We met them last year. It didn't take him long to do it, but it cured his little itch to do something besides relax. We did do a day away from the campground once-went on a cruise and out to eat, did a little shopping in Portland. I got a pair of beautiful hand-made dangly sea glass earrings.
The kids had a great time taking part in all the kids activites that went on--movie night at the rec hall(we went too), soap carving, water balloon relay, the ice cream eating contest, hay rides, the rocket launch, kareoke, etc.
I miss it there already and can't wait to go back next year. Already made reservations!
No comments:
Post a Comment