A bowl full of campers

This past weekend we went camping, which is precisely what we did a year ago over Labor Day. Do I smell a tradition? Last year we camped like a couple of dufuses—forgetting just about everything. This year I was determined to make amends, by bringing our entire apartment with us.

Clara roughed it fantastically well. Which is good news for Tom. If she hadn't done so well I probably would have called it quits with camping for eternity. She slept fantastically well. No thanks to me, of course. You see, it was cold. Bitter cold. She was bundled, to be sure, but still I almost exploded with worry. So I checked on her. A lot. And as you can probably guess, every half-hour checking-in-ons to poke and prod to make sure she's still breathing and rewrap and rearrange blankets doesn't do wonders for R.E.M. Yet despite it all, she slept like a rock.

Me? I can safely say I got about 20 minutes of sleep total, all night. But it's not like I really expected to sleep anyway. Because who takes their four month old camping in freezing cold weather and sleeps with good conscience?  Oh, and then there's the minor fact that we were in bear country. Did I mention I almost exploded with worry?

But we had a fantastically great time. We went with the same chaps as last year: Aileen, Nicole and Nate and Anamae—plus more this time! It made for a menagerie of whistled 80's TV theme songs around the campfire, an awesome story about the world-famous Vancouver X-Files tour, and even a few appearances from a professional saxophone/kazoo player. We even had secret sister gifts for each other. Is that just the cutest thing you've heard all day? I gave a Disney princess slap bracelet (with charms!) and an imitation porcelain wedding cake topper from the dollar store. You wish you were on the receiving end of my secret sistering goodness, don't you? I knew it.

Unfortunately we never got a picture of the whole group. But Tom did get some real winners, to be sure.

Observe:

I like this picture because Aileen looks like she's about to give someone a knuckle sandwich (did I really just write knuckle sandwich?) and I look like a crazed twenty-minutes-of-sleep camping enthusiast.

I like this picture because first of all there's a floating cup. And I also like Aileen's facial expression. So stoic, she is. And if you look closely you'll notice a wild, indigenous Pack n' Play just behind Nicole. 'Tis a rare feat to catch one on film.

These next gems I like to refer to as The Bacon Series.
Wherein Season inspects the physical and metaphysical properties of a piece of bacon.

The conclusion? That's a piece of bacon, all right. Look for it in a documentary someday.





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Coming soon: (or eventually. Hopefully. Maybe? We'll see.)
Pictures from California.