All Things Anne

We’ll be gone tomorrow, doubt I’ll have time to get on. Take care!

Love y’all!
Anne

This post brought to you by the awesomely cool computer George Bonswah Beethoven, who is also sad to see Anne go.

The last week or so has been very busy as we’re getting ready to go hunting–Saturday the 27th (which also happens to be Mom and Dad’s 23rd wedding anniversary!).So far, we’ve gone shopping Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and now Thursday. If you think that’s an awful lot of shopping, just think there’s an awful lot of us and we eat an awful lot!

On Tuesday, just Mom, Joe, Eric, Elle Jane, and I went. We dropped the boys off at Mr. Johnson’s to work, then went to Walmart. Near the end of our “Walmart experience”, Elle Jane began to cry in earnest. Next stop was Albertson’s, and she cried through that, too.
This little boy, cute kid, probably about 10 or so peeked in at her. “Girl?” he asked.”
“Yeah,” I said.
He looked knowing. “That’s why she cries so much.”
“He sounded so…knowing!” I said, when I told Dad. “As if he’s had experience!”
Dad nodded wisely. “Give him a few years and he’ll realize they don’t quit [crying], either!”

We’ve been cooking for the trip, too. One of the girls made blueberry muffins last night, and I made cubed, herbed potatoes (two batches of two 9×13 pans, so, four 9×13 pans’ worth). I think chocolate chip cookies will be made, too, for our “survival packs”.

You know, I guess I should explain a little about our “survival packs”. We all carry around backpacks that have stuff like parachute cord, electrical tape, matches, firestarter, handwarmers, stuff like that in it. But, I haven’t mentioned the most important item (besides toilet paper) that we carry in our packs. The absolutely most important thing we carry in our survival packs is emergency rations, which are usually things like jerky, candy bars, and cookies. Invariably, we get lost (well, not I, but everyone else) on the way to the hunting grounds, and everybody has to break out their emergency rations.
Take last year, for instance: It was around Eric’s birthday, and he had been given a whole bag of blond brownies, PLUS the blond brownies in his survival pack. He got so lost on the way to the hunting grounds, he consumed a whole bag of blond brownies on the way there!
See what I mean?

Anyhow. Today Beth also got her mole chopped off, literally. (That’s what Eric called it. Of course, doctors call it something nice, like “surgery”.) Originally she was going in for a consultation, because this mole she has–well, had–on her forehead has been growing. Weird, eh? So she went in for a consultation, and evidently they gave them the option to get it cut off! So Mom said they numbed the spot, took a razor blade, and just sliced it off. YIKES. (For more details, view her post.)

Rase lost his first tooth on Sunday. He was eating garlic bread, a big, crunchy heel, and when he was done he said “There’s something wrong with my tooth!”
Dad looked in his mouth and said, “What’s wrong with your tooth is that it isn’t there!”
He ate it and didn’t even know it! Reminded everybody of Eric, who would sneeze and lose teeth. That’s another story, though!

Well, that’s all I have for news right now. Toodles!

This post brought to you by the awesomely cool computer George Bonswah Beethoven, who needs a regular air conditioner because evidently Windows runs hotter than Linux.

(Written Saturday night, posted Sunday morning)

Well, we’re home now! We’ve been home since three or so. It was a lot of fun…long, but fun!

We did get out of the house by 6, like Dad wanted. It was dark out, real dark. The sun hadn’t even wakened yet! We were all pretty tired except Dad, who seemed fairly chipper. He’d been up longer than anyone else so he was the most awake! I didn’t wake up totally until about eight or so. There wasn’t much talk; Joe tried to get to sleep but he couldn’t. I think I tried…like I said, I was still about half asleep!

I hadn’t had any breakfast (or coffee all day until now, for that matter) because usually I can’t eat first thing in the morning, so I brought some Saltine’s in my handy-dandy carry-all bag (also loaded with a few notebooks and the 193 pages of my novel to put into order…printers print from the first page on when they should print from the last page!), which I broke out about 7:30, because my tummy was saying, as Andy Williams from Casting Crowns puts it, “Oh my gosh, feed me!!“).
“Do you want something to eat?” Dad asked. “A sandwich?”
I shook my head. “I want crackers.” I ate two crackers and felt better. So then what does Dad do?
“Hey, why don’t we break out the snacks?”
Ha!
So I ate some chips. We all did. And I put my chips on my lap, kind of…they fell there kind of, actually. That’s important.
Some of us had cookies, too, but I wasn’t one of the ones who did. They were molasses cookies, by the way. That isn’t important but I thought you might want to know.

Anyway.

We got there around 9 or 10. Guess what the man’s name was? Nacio (as in Nacho, short for Ignacio). He was Spanish-Mexican (not Indian-Mexican), and very handsome. Dad even said so (he brought it up, and in case you think it’s weird for my dad to say a guy is handsome, it isn’t. He has to pick husbands for us girls, ok?). His kids took after him more than their Mom (Amy), and they were beautiful. Claudio was 16 months old, and reminded me of Jay, he was sooo funny! I showed Amy and daughters a picture of Jay I had on my phone because I said Claudio reminded me of Jay, and Amy showed Claudio, and he looked and looked at it.
“It’s her little brother, Jay,” the Mom said.
That little Claudio tipped his head to one side and said “Cuuuuute!”
Fortunately Dad had texted me a picture of Elle Jane (I haven’t taken any of her yet) so I showed them that, too!

We looked in the camper, it’s pretty nice! Good condition and all. It’s all white with a red stripe and a black stripe all the way around, on the outside, and inside it’s done in red, black, and white in kind of a 1950’s soda shop style, but with a wallpaper strip that has a little French chef that says “Bon Appetite”. It’s neat. I like it. Since it’s 24 feet (not inches!), and that’s bigger than the other one (the other one is 16 feet), it’ll be the girls’ trailer.
Dad wants to pull doubles with the van, first the big camper then the smaller one, and I suggested, “We should hang a sign on the big one that says ‘Girls’ Dorm’ and a sign on the small one that says ‘Boy’s Dorm’!” He thought that was a good idea!

We were at Nacio’s for a bit, the guys working to hook the trailer up to the van. Us girls were off to one side (with Claudio and Rase) so we wouldn’t get in the way. We talked a bit. Babies are great icebreakers, did you know that? It’s true. That’s how we started talking, because I was asking about Claudio!
After a little bit of talking, we left and went into Whitehall to get fuel and take a look at the inside of the gas station’s bathrooms. Across from the pumps is a taxidermy shop, and it’s really cool–it has a male African lion in the window!

Then we started for home. On the way we finished the chips, cookies, and hot dogs. I slept for half an hour or so on the way home, which was nice, and then I took an hour nap when we got home, after showing everyone the camper. I was tired up until I had my first (and only) cup of coffee at 9 PM.

Then I sat down to write this blog post!