Bringing up the rear to summer

Settling into the second fourth week of school (it's taking me forever to finish a blog post) and its finally allowing some time to blog.  This post will probably have a bunch of unrelated stuff, but crazy post better than no post??

First Day of School for the Big Kids

 

Robbie turned 12, started middle school this month and went to his first school dance.  Since we were camping for his actual birthday and he and Jeff got to go white water rafting while we camped in Pennsylvania.  I would say his best birthday thing to do was playing paint ball - since he hasn't spoke of anything else since...  They came home stinky sweaty and full of welts but with the biggest smiles across their faces. So far Robbie likes middle school and particularly likes catching a ride with his sister - don't get used to it, it's back to the bus next year!! 

Birthday boy

 

We have been doing a lot of camping this year and Matt seems to really like it, besides not wanting to go to bed on time  or sleep alone in his bed.  We have been to Mohican, West Branch, Ohio Pyle, East Harbor and Amish country.

Camping With cousins Wesley and Leland

 

This would have been a great picture - but Shelby had to work :(

Braving the water slide at East Harbor - Matt told us "more please" after he got off

Driving Papa's boat

 

 About a 1/2 hour into our trip to Ohio Pyle  in Pennsylvania - I started to notice the truck was starting to get kinda loud.  It just kept getting louder and louder.  As pulled more hills, we kept blowing out more pieces of our muffler.  It was early evening and I attempted to make phone calls on our route to see if we could have it looked at.  After awhile, it was just so loud we bust out laughing as each new chunk blew and we had to eventually accept that it couldn't be looked at till the next day.  I am sure if you were within 100 miles, you might have heard us - a Hemi with no muffler is hard not to notice.  Thankfully we reached the park and the staff directed us to a local - who we affectionately nicknamed as "cussword Larry".  Even though the kind hearted man  spewed strings of obscenities (but still called me "dear"??)- he worked on Saturday to fix our truck and charged us a 1/3 of what anyone else would have to fix it.  We are contemplating making the 4 four drive to have all our future truck repairs done with ol Larry.