The girls and I had fun driving up to Camp Kanata for the day on Sunday. We cooked on Tom’s propane stove, went for a hike, and generally goofed around and had a good time.

Read on for a 30-second catchup on other news of late…

We had our 2005 water park experience a couple weekends ago, and we had a great time. It was an Indian Princess outing, but we invited along the entire families for a change. The girls get braver every time we hit a theme park. Our favorite was the long two-person tube ride, with daddy holding Wrenny up in her tube with his feet so she didn’t fall in the hole, and Reiley braving the front of Mom’s tube, glad she didn’t have dad’s extra weight to throw her around too much. We hit that one 3 or 4 times. The girls also braved a faster shorter two-person version where we went fast enough to almost catch some air. Speaking of… one of the highlights of the day was watching mom rocket down “daredevil drop” – a slide that was (no lie) 5 or 6 stories high, pretty much straight down. We could hear her scream from below as she started to freefall, picking up enough speed to shoot a huge spray by the end of the ride. Good one mom! Add in a trip around the Lazee river, pirate ship jumping and getting knocked over in the wave pool, and we came home soaked, wiped out, and smiling.

We went back and dug this one up following our recent obsession with rhyming slang, and were NOT disappointed – the DVD extras include a Cockney Rhyming Slang dictionary! And the movie simply rocks, well worth a repeat viewing.

Dan, Val and Bailey came to visit last weekend and we all had a fantastic time. Mellow Mushroom, ComedyWorx, IMAX (documentary on the great coral reefs of the world and the destruction we’re causing to them, beautiful and horrifying), self-indulgent Zoolander/Swingers encore showing, Imaginiff (I will forever more be known simply as “pigpen”), computer building and gaming, late-night confessions from our younger days – we all had a great time, including the three girls, who disappeared into their own world all weekend long. Let’s do it again soon!

On very little sleep, they then headed off to go whitewater rafting in Asheville, then down to Alabama to see Tommy graduate from helicopter training (way to go Tommy!), then head home. Crazy fun!

I can’t believe we did it! Our friends John and Terra invited us to join them and their family on a weekend camping trip at Hammocks Beach State Park. We knew we were taking things to the next level of family camping: backpack camping, only accessible by boat, walk-in of a mile or so to the campsite, walk of a half-mile from campsite to the only source of water, no fires (so meals consisted of trailmix and energy bars), and rough weather predicted (60% chance of rain, dangerous riptide currents). So we were mentally psyched for a good challenge!

Which was a good thing – it rained on us before we even reached the campsite. The girls were awesome troopers – their packs were proportionally as big as ours, and not one complaint on the whole mile-long hike! By the time we got there, the rain had let up a bit. John and Terra had arrived early that morning, having been denied a campsite the night before – the demand is high and there are only ten available. Terra took care of us all by camping out in her car at the park entrance that night and grabbing two reservations in the wee early hours of the morning, yea Terra! So John was there when we arrived at the campsite, to help me jury-rig the “tarp” I happened to have brought (thinking I would put it under the tent) as a “rainfly”.

That one small compound word precisely delineates amateurs from professional campers. A rainfly is simply a sheet of tent material with tie ropes at the corners and edges. You throw the whole thing over the tent and stake it down, to provide an additional layer of rainproofing. Ideally, the contact between the tent material and the rainfly material is minimal.

It turned out I was dealing with a pair of good-news-bad-news. Let’s go goodnews-badnews, badnews-goodnews, ready!? Goodnews-badnews: the “tarp” I threw in at the last minute actually *was* a rainfly – so I qualify as a pro camper, if only by accident. Unfortunately, the KMart blue-light-special 2000SF tent I broke my back carrying in was way too big for it, as well as too big to get stable in the high winds coming off the beach. OK, now badnews-goodnews: tent stakes don’t hold in sand and high wind. At all. However, Terra had coached me on this one: “bring lots of plastic grocery bags”. John showed me how to create “sand stakes”: dig a 1′ deep hole, fill a bag, flatten it, tie the tent flap to it, and bury it. Viola, instant tent anchor! With John’s help, we were able to have a functioning tent just in time for the harder rains to kick in. Thanks John and Terra!

The undersized rainfly kept everyone but me totally dry. I didn’t mind sleeping in water – without the rain it would have been too hot to sleep comfortably. It rained all night, but by morning, the sun broke through – we were set for a full day of sun and surf.

The waves were great fun, Reiley, Wrenny, Ruthie and I formed the Wave Crashers Club and showed ’em who’s boss, although we all got our turns to get knocked down. John and Andy and Andrea and I bodysurfed on some pretty big ones, all of us donating to the skin gods. Terra and Talia and the three dogs (Lily and their two dogs Autumn and Tuck) explored the massive beach, which we pretty much had all to ourselves all day. And we soaked it up! :>

The hardcore campers are now ready for the next big outing!

Wow, Mother’s Day was something else this year! Both Gram and Grammy came to visit for the week, which included my birthday, Mother’s Day, and Reiley’s 9th birthday. That’s a lot of celebrating!

Mum and I went out to JC Penney’s to shop using her gift certificate last night, and she picked up a nice pink cardigan. In classic form, she managed to talk me into shopping for myself as well. I grabbed supplies for the upcoming Indian Princess Spring Outing (next weekend, yikes!) and a holster for my new Treo. We even ate in the food court, it was fun!

Also planted a couple of trees for Andrea, and now we’re ramping up for the big birthday, tomorrow!