Memories

We camped in the backyard last night.  I think backyarding it is something done for the memory because when it is in the present, it's just a lot of not sleeping.  The Little Linebacker changed sleeping positions approximately once every 2.7 seconds for the entire night.  And it's not like he was just rolling over.  He would go from laying with his head next to mine and his body straight out, to squished in a ball against a far corner of the tent, to cuddlingg up too closely to his sister's scarred, sore leg...every 2.7 seconds, honestly every 2.7 seconds.  Good Golly.  I did try to cuddle/strangle hold him for a bit.  But the boy had the wiggles and the jiggles in him and his body was not to be restrained.

Well, I guess I backyard camp for the memories and for that part of the morning where everyone wakes up and piles close together and laughs and giggles and teases together.  That makes it worth it...I'm pretty sure.

Since we were all up and at 'em at 5:30am this morning with the birds and the sun and people speeding down our quiet road going who-the-heck knows where, we decided to get some hiking out of our day before it got too hot.  We went out and found the one really gigantic rock within a hundred miles of our house and we hiked around it.  Captain Kindergarten led the hike and he found all sorts of crevices, caves for him, to shimmy into and to climb up as far as his 5 year old body could get him.  Well, and as far as his grossed out mother would allow him.  It wasn't so much the spider webs and the poisonous snake-hiding leaf litter around the boulders that made me hold him back as it was the loads, and loads, and loads of trash - broken beer bottles, beer cans, pieces of clothes, computer processors, broken beer bottles, beer cans, Styrofoam coolers in bits, broken beer bottles, beer cans, empty spray paint cans, broken beer bottles, beer cans... anger did fill my heart, exceedingly.

Luckily my boys having a darned good time jumping up and down rocks, path finding, generally finding joy in nature, and running around with dirt on their bottoms distracted me from spending the whole time cursing every dumb, selfish kid that ever came to the place.  Captain Kindergarten and the Little Linebacker had settled in on Utopia and didn't notice a single broken bottle for all the play land.  SKS didn't feel quite the same though, she kept  a steady buzz in Spouse-the-Carrier-of-Girls-Recovering-From-Lengthy-Stays-in-Full-Leg-Casts' ears about how he needed to be careful and that she wanted to go back to the car.  Baby Girl just held on for dear life in the baby carrier on me hoping that I would stop following C.K. through narrow spaces and up rocks that required me to crawl which made her hang down perilously close to the rock herself.

We were rewarded for our hiking by stumbling on a path that went to the top of the rock.  We had a view of trees and farmland that satisfied that human bit that likes to see large vistas of quiet, seemingly ordered beauty.  Of course in the middle of all this peace, love and happiness, I had moments of extreme panic as small boys approached dramatic ledges.

But what I'm trying to say here was that last night through today was fun and memorable and rad.  And since Spouse-My-Friend and I are not good at taking pictures, it was also something worth writing about.