If the crown fits...: swimming

Last week the kids and I went to our friend's house to swim for the day...Tyler had his phone in his swim shorts and jumped in the pool and it was totally waterlogged and ruined. Since we had already paid to have it replaced once (when he lost it in the snow over Spring Break at grandma's) I told him that he would have to pay this time. We told him that he would probably need to just get a very basic phone. No pictures or music. This last week was so busy with Tyler going to baseball camp all week and Parker and I going to Twilight Camp all week, and Maris didn't even get a day off because he had to go to training (if you count going to a speedway and testing Audi's, BMW's and Saab's as training). Anyway, no time to replace the phone. Tyler knew he was probably missing some texts. Because he doesn't actually talk on the phone. All his friends just text each other. But he was OK. So a guy Maris works with got a new phone and gave Maris his old phone to give to Tyler. It's a BlackBerry. So much for roughing it.

I did hear him telling Conner the other day that his phone doesn't take pictures. Poor kid.

Speaking of Baseball Camp, it ended on Friday and at the end of camp they do different skills tests. Tyler won the Distance Throw award of all the kids in camp (incoming 6th-8th graders). His friend Mason won for Fastest. Unfortunately, I have no camp pictures, you'll just have to imagine it.

And Twilight Camp is finally over. 5 days, 25+ hours, 20 workshops, miles of hiking up and down the hill....

Between all the walking and the fact that I ate really good this week I was hoping for some weight loss. No such luck. Maybe I gained muscle??

I did gain something, though. Chigger bites. Lucky me. I have them all around my waist and a bunch on my thigh, and a few scattered here and there on my legs and feet.

It was fun being there with Parker, though. And I learned how to shoot a bow. This is my actual target for the first time I have ever shot a bow and arrow. I shot 5 arrows, but the first one went crazy, before I got a handle on what I was doing.

Friday night was the Weblos Overnighter. Parker needed it to get his Arrow of Light. So we set the tents up in this field of wolf spiders. There were hundreds, no thousands of them. We borrowed a tent from the McFarlands, because we don't camp. Maris brought it up with him that night for he and Parker to put up. At first, he insisted that they wouldn't need a tent, that they would just sleep out in the fresh air like we do in Idaho. After I explained the bug and spider situation to him, he reluctantly agreed to pick up the tent. Then I got a HUGE laugh when he got up there that night because he was carrying the tent, sleeping bags and pillows and a huge bottle of Ortho Home Defense bug spray killer. I don't mean the little spray bottle like Windex or Spray n Wash, I mean the big bottle with the attached tubing to spray through. He said that when they got up to the tents, there were about 30 wolf spiders on the Coley's tent that we had set up earlier.
When they got home on Saturday morning, I asked if he had fun. His answer was, I love our son, but I am NOT a camper. I guess it cooled down to about 75 degrees by about 4 am. And Friday was very hot and sticky. I know. I hiked around in it for 5 hours. And wanting to minimize what he took, he didn't take pads to sleep on. The fact that his brothers Scott and Chris are such big campers makes it even funnier...

Just a couple more pictures to close out the week:

Yesterday, Parker's all-star team played in a select tournament to get in some practice before next week. He did a great job. Look how cute he is:
Tyler leaves tomorrow for Scout Camp. At 4:30 am. He'll be gone all week...I'm going to miss him!! He is very excited though. Somehow, the camping gene skipped Maris and I and our kids got it. Thank goodness for Brother McFarland and Brother Thomas.

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