Beware the Crazed Deer

So this is what I woke up to. I'm sharing a room with my sister Catherine...and, well she's not always the neatest person. So I told her she absolutely had to make at least her side of the bed and couldn't just leave it all nasty looking all week long. Here, you can see that she did exactly what I told her to do...made just her side of the bed :p

There's this weird swamp thing on either side of the walkway to the beach. We're all wondering how deep the water really is...and what's lurking beneath it. Yeah, we watch too much Doctor Who

Here's our house from the back. It's a duplex and we're on the right side in this picture...The one with all the towels and stuff hanging everywhere. Hey, at least we used real suitcases and not Piggly Wiggly bags. There's actually Piggly Wiggly right down the road from our beach house too...

Love the messy bun? I may have slept on my hair for a few hours....

I'm glad my brother, M, volunteered to take pictures. But even he noticed I didn't feel that great 'cause he kept pointing out how unhappy I looked in most of the pictures :p Hopefully I look sort of decent in these...

I really missed this dress...it sat in my closet all summer 'cause the zipper was broken until last week.

"Don't you dare take my picture!" She's gonna kill me for this...but who cares :p I love this picture...and my mom!

Anyways, I don't really have any pictures of this, but I went with a long walk with my mom after the kids were all in bed. It was really awesome 'cause the bike trail we walked on was absolutely gorgeous in the moonlight! I haven't really had a chance to talk with my mom alone for a long time and it was so nice to be able to do that. I love spending time with her, but she just has so many other children it's hard to get any one-on-one time with her. 

We ended up walking almost the entire bike trail ...in the dark.  The trail goes through a forest of sorts and is filled with Spanish moss covered trees and lots of swamp-like areas. So in the dark it's really beautiful...but also a bit creepy. Anyways, we saw a bunch of deer ahead of us and they just kept moving up the bike trail a little bit until we caught up with them--and then they would just move again. But then the rest of the walk we kept jumping every time we heard a stick crack in the woods. Shoes in hand I was ready to smack any harmless creatures that dared come near us. People, deer are terrifying in the middle of the night. Especially when you've got nothing to defend yourself with except for a pair of white flip flops and a purple glowstick. Oh and the frogs sounded like goats...no kidding (see what I did there...) they really sound like goats.

Welp, that's it for today. Night y'all!

Dang, It's Hot Out There

So day 2 of vacation started out with a dolphin sighting! So fun! I almost missed the picture 'cause I didn't have the camera with me and had to run get it. Aaand then I realized I also didn't have the SD card either. So I'm running all over the place like a crazy person trying to find everything lol!

Our house is freeeeezing! So when you take the camera from the inside to the outside, the lens gets all weird and foggy. This time though, instead of cleaning the lens, I thought I'd try to take some pictures and see if I got an interesting effect. I think they look pretty cool myself...

I was about to step out onto the back porch, but then I saw this little guy hanging on the window!

Everyone just chillin' after a long day. I'm so happy that my Papaw was able to join us on this trip!

Apples to Apples on one side of the table and Shanghai on the other.

Well, that's it for today. Bad internet still, but much better than last time. And it really did take me about 2 hours to upload these photos ...again. Yikes. I love it here...but seriously, internet!!! 

We Made It!

Hey, y'all! So we're at Edisto Beach in South Carolina right now. We have a different camera for the trip..and, well, I'm still trying to figure out how to use it. Anyways, this is the only non-blurry picture I have from today.

It's awesome 'cause as soon as Catherine and I walked in our room, she runs and jumps into one of the chairs yelling, "Bring out the comfy chair!" So I went to poke her with the soft cushions...if you don't get this reference, then you need to watch more Monty Python. Or just this clip here.

Anyways, after 15 hours in the same car with 9 other people...we're still alive! And we're in SC right now :) The internet's a wee bit odd...so idk how much blogging I'll get done. Basically it took me about 30 minutes to upload just one photo.  But I'll do my best to get some stuff up throughout the week!

ACE at Camp Friedlander

Last camp post. I promise. Anyways, one of the things I got to do at camp was ACE. Advanced Camper Experience. I think. I could be wrong 'cause I really don't remember exactly what ACE stands for. But that sounds about right. Although I guess it could stand for Awesome Caribbean Eagles or Actually Coral Exists...but that makes no sense.

Anyways, yes, back to ACE. And this was my first glimpse of the climbing wall.

So me, Grace, and Emma (I'm quite aware that's grammatically incorrect in so many ways...but that's the order we're standing in the picture) are actually junior leaders in American Heritage Girls so we weren't supposed to be able to participate in activities. But, since there weren't enough girls signed up for ACE they asked us to be the last few participants. 

Climbing gear! I know. You wish you looked this awesome.

Yes.

So first we did ice climbing. Yes, in August. Ice climbing. Haha well, technically it was using ice climbing equipment on a foam wall. But still, I can now say I've been ice climbing. Which is good, because I will never do it again. It was hilarious...and rather pitiful. I could barely make it up the wall and the instructors were all at the base of the wall (well, really only a few feet below me) encouraging me to keep going. I'm just like heeeck no! Ain't no way I'm gonna make it any up the wall any more! Then I made it only about the same distance on the rock wall. Yeah, I really suck at climbing. Repelling though was really fun! That's something I'd love to do again! But, I never went back to the climbing wall that week...

Day 2 we went for a 13 mile bike ride. I actually enjoyed this! I may have zero upper body strength for climbing, but when it comes to biking...thunder thighs for the win! My only complaint (or should it be "camp"laint?) is that the bike seats were a wee bit uncomfortable...and I couldn't sit down the rest of the day! But still, I biked 13 miles and didn't die. Then we had to walk our bikes up the rifle trail...at least a mile of rocky terrain.. Guess I'm not as out of shape as I thought. That was really encouraging after climbing the day before. Sorry there aren't any pictures of the bike ride :(

Day 3 was supposed to be a 3 hour canoe trip...it turned into a 4 hour canoe trip and we even ended up missing the place we were supposed to stop at and we had to backtrack a bit! 3 hour canoe trip...haha, yeah feel free to sing that to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme song. It was a fun trip though even though we missed lunch and had to call the camp to make sure they saved some food for us! And again...no pictures. Sooorry! But it was an Amazing Canoeing Experience...haha see what I did there.

This is the only picture I have of day 4--lake day! Spent 3 hours kayaking and doing other lake stuff. And then later that day was outpost--that was interesting. We had to walk quite a ways to get to the outpost site...and it was raining. I could already tell outpost was going to be fun.

Yeah, we passed the Grand Canyon on the way to outpost. That's how far we had to walk.

So...our tent may have been missing a few pieces. But thankfully we had duct tape! Duct tape, string, and sticks. So we continued setting our tent up in the mud...and did I mention it was still raining? Oh yeah...and there weren't any bathrooms either. Just nasty little outhouses that you could smell from several feet away. So. Fun.

Here we are trying to figure out what to do with so few tent pieces.

I don't sleep well at night anyways, so the thought of having to sleep on the ground did not sound fun to me. Don't get me wrong, I love the outdoors and I love camping! But, I usually bring an air mattress with me. Well, as soon as we got in our tent it really started raining. 

So here's the scene: duct taped tent, the tent's set up in the mud, and now it's really raining hard. I drifted off to sleep for a few minutes around 12:30 but as I saw some water seeping in through the sides of the tent I did not go back to sleep. Soooo I just sat there on a soggy sleeping bag in a puddle of water waiting for everyone else to get up so we could walk back to camp. And I kept checking the time to see how long I had to wait...longest night ever!

I slept in my clothes, had no makeup on, and my hair looked awesome (sarcasm). That was a bit of an Aggravating Camper Experience. I love you, Camp Friedlander...but outpost? Heck no. Anyways, I could have changed...but the extra clothes I brought with me were also soaked from sitting in the puddle of water in the tent. So I think we may have been a little late for flag ceremony, I can't remember...but yeah, I could not wait to be done with breakfast so I could go shower!

Day 5, after showering and cleaning up a little, we were going to play frisbee golf...but everyone was so tired that we just sat in the dining hall and watched Howl's Moving Castle. I seriously love that movie. And almost no one else had seen it before! But yeah, what other camp can you go to and watch anime? Pretty awesome if you ask me! 

Ah, Camp Friedlander...you made me realize that camp actually can be fun! (even with outpost!) Let's just say the camp I went to when I was a kid wasn't that amazing... But yeah, this has restored my faith in camp! And I'll tell you what ...going to camp as an adult rather than a camper was awesome. A (mostly) free schedule, access to electronics, and I got to keep my cell phone with me the entire time? Yeah...it was great.

Well, that's the last of the camp posts. This next week I'll be in South Carolina on vacation so I'll have some fun beach pictures for y'all. I know my blog's been a bit different this past month, but as soon as I get back to school I'll hopefully get back into the swing of things with regular posts!

 Pictures by me, Emma, and Grace