Happy 1st Birthday, Brianna!
I’m writing this update live from our tent
in the Carrington’s back yard because the weather has finally cooperated for
us; and we’re having our first camping adventure of the cousins’ holiday to go
along with Brianna’s birthday. Rowen and
I have Ehlana, Naomi, and Brianna with us tonight too, but all four of my tent
mates have crashed for the night; and Rowen wasn’t even the last to finally
fall asleep. Naomi had that honor; and
our girl chat time was a lot of fun once we were all in here for the night –
even when it was just the two of us.
That camping decision was made this
morning, not long after breakfast; and that’s why a lot of my day has been
filled with work instead of play time – at least until Brianna’s party
started. I also needed to mow the lawn
here at home and do some basic gardening; but had help from that from Dawn,
Jillian, Jaimie, Kaitlyn, and Kara before we then moved on to Brianna’s house
to help out with the work there. Getting
set up for the party was part of that, but we also set up four tents for the
camping; and had to take a turn at kid control when Mom, Aunt Leanne, and the
other volunteers needed to do other things instead – like making lunch for all
of the kids, teens, and adult volunteers.
The kid part of Brianna’s party started at
three o’clock; and Dawn, Jillian, and I were on kid control from then on –
sometimes with help from other teens; including Michael, Tim, and Rowen. Except for right at the start, while Michael
was still on his break before the dinner shift at the Inn; that wasn’t until
later for the boys. Rowen came over
before Michael left, though; and has stayed here since then. The afternoon games were all rated for one
and two-year old kids; we made sure that all of Brianna’s friends ‘won’ at
least a few prizes of treats or little toys; and we had a highly-supervised
swim for all of them too before we had some wind-down play time heading into
dinner. Since that meal was late so that
the doctors and nurses in the family could be here for it too; we also had
snacks and drinks available; and had to try and keep track of the munchies
intake for some of those kids to keep them from exploding long before we got
around to the dinner, cake, and ice cream part of the fun.
While Aunt Leanne took the day off from
work, Dad only left an hour early so that he could help Grandpa and some of the
other guys with the grilling part of the cooking for our meal. Hot dogs and hamburgers were easy enough, but
we had quite a few adults at the dinner too; so they also cooked up some steaks,
chicken, and a few racks of ribs that took more time and effort. The meal was a crazy-busy adventure for those
of us on kid control; and that’s the only reason why I was close to Brianna at
all while we ate – because I was one of the teens in charge of watching her
little gang of daycare and Sunday school nursery friends. That meant getting to have bonus fun with
Aunt Leanne too; so I had a blast even with all of the work.
There is one really great bonus to
summertime parties for toddlers, and that’s the ability to dunk them into the
river to clean them off after they’ve made a mess of themselves during the
meal. Ditto that for me, and while I
love having long hair; it is a magnet for little kids – even when they’re
covered to the elbows in chocolate cake and ice cream; so I needed to be
cleaned up as badly as some of the kids did.
How messy was it? Bad enough that
I hopped into the river later when I had a break from the kids with my travel
bottle of shampoo to finish getting rid of the remaining bits of sticky
grossness.
Most of the youngest kids headed home not
long after that post-dessert clean-up swim; but we had some kids stay to play
with the rest of us – and other kids and teens had tents set up for them so
that they could join the camping adventure.
That included Patrick, Scott, Jessica, and Lindsay; and they were all
invited to join in so we’d have enough help for the younger kids that are here
for the night too. We played more games
in the back yards until it was nearly dark; followed that up with a campfire;
and added in a few bonus bits of fun like having the kids play with sparklers
for a while to go along with the music and scary campfire stories.
This time, other teens and parents took
care of putting younger kids into sleeping bags and tents as they ran out of
steam and fell asleep, but that was only because Michael and I were on music
duty then and I also had Brianna in my lap for a lot of that time too. She is, by the way, such a ray of joy that I
fall in love with her all over again pretty much every time I’m around
her. She’s a little Magi dynamo, and is
as beautiful as her mother; but it’s that gift of joy and love that’s truly
amazing – and something that everyone notices; whether they’re consciously
aware of it or not.
We’ve got another busy day ahead of us for
Saturday, so I’d better move this along and wrap it up so I can get some sleep
too – assuming Brianna doesn’t wake up and want to start partying again!
The campfire wrapped up at midnight. Some of us went for a swim after getting all
of the younger kids still standing ready for bed and tucked into their sleeping
bags. Michael and I were among those
swimmers, and we had fun with that too; but he was ready to crash by then so we
didn’t swim for long. I needed to
retrieve Naomi from Ethan’s sleeping bag once we got back to our tents – and did
that despite the fact that she was pretending to be sleeping already; but we
did take pictures first before I pulled her out of Ethan’s arms and carried her
back to our tent. She thought it was
funny that Rowen and I didn’t want her in the tent with the boys when Michael
and Tim got changed out of their swimsuits; which has me wondering just how
scary Liz must’ve been as a kid and teen! ;^)
I’ve already mentioned the girl chat; we
listened to some music on my computer while I did my email check and a bit of
family business work; and now it’s time to finish this update so that I can
head off into nap mode. We’ll be doing a
breakfast at the Inn surprise for the campers in the morning that most of the
kids don’t know about because Aunt Leanne did not want to feed this large a
gang again. We also have a family and
friends day planned for quarry Lake tomorrow after that; and some of us also
have a teen birthday party and camping night there to go along with all of the
family fun. Michael has to work too; but
he’s doing the breakfast and dinner shifts so that he can be out at Quarry Lake
most of the day – and then again tomorrow night for the campfire and camping
part of the teen fun. All of that news
can wait for the next update, though, and I really do need to get what sleep I
can now; so, until next time...
...May the Magi Force be with you!
