Pickles & Dimes

This year’s camping trip was affected slightly by the weather – twice – as we waited to drive to Jason’s parents’ house on Friday until after we made sure the storms weren’t going to shatter our windows at home. (Every time thunder rumbled, our basement windows rattled ominously. We also got two inches of rain in 90 minutes.)

Then on Saturday night, another nasty storm blew through, sending us sheets of rain propelled by gusty winds, tornado warnings and angry lightning, so half of us took refuge in the basement while the rest of us decided not to get drenched in the pouring rain and stayed in the garage. We sat there huddled with our friends, their two kids and two dogs, and right after the radio announced, “[Town we were in] is in the bullseye of this storm,” and we started to get a little scared, Jason’s dad threw open the garage door and bellowed, “What are you guys doing?” We all jumped a mile and sheepishly ran for the safety of the basement. Seriously, the only way that moment would’ve been scarier was if he had been wearing a hockey mask and brandishing a smoking chainsaw. So we all sat in the basement, shivering wetly: eight adults, four kids and four wet dogs that smelled like, well, wet dog. After the robotic weather radio man finally gave us the all-clear, we shuffled outside to our campers.

And then the power went out.

And that is how we ended up going to bed before 10 pm in our damp camper listening to our popup shake every time the ground rumbled from thunder and counting “One Mississippi, two Mississippi…” every time lightning flashed.

Shorty slept through it all, obviously.

But besides the brief bad weather, the weekend was awesome. Lots of great food and games, and the kids had a blast on the bounce house, inflatable water slide and kiddie pool.

The adults played more Minute to Win It games.

Try to put the hat on your head. While it’s attached to a fishing pole. And you’re blindfolded.

Use a straw to suck up an M&M…

And transfer it across the way to deposit onto another straw.

Blow up a balloon and use the air to blow plastic cups off a table. (This one was my favorite. I skipped doing it last time because I figured “Me + Asthma = Nothing Good Can Come From This,” but it was easy.)

Stick a pedometer on your head and shake your head to see how many “steps” you get in 60 seconds. (This one hurts your neck SO BAD.)

Jason & Shorty were tuckered out. It was maybe 85 degrees, even though it was cloudy, but the humidity was INSANE.

Shorty was great. As spoiled at it may be, having a separate camping chair for him means he sits in it instead of getting wound up around other chairs or picnic tables. Jason & I even got to leave his sight to eat dinner. I went over to check on him and found him in doggie heaven, sitting contentedly in his camping chair while one of the men he used to habitually bark at was scratching him behind his ears. He did SO GOOD at not barking at people. SO GOOD. It might sound stupid, but we were so proud of him for being a good boy.

We kept Shorty on his cable tie-out because even though he gets along with all the other dogs that were there, he also likes to bolt for the road (and not listen when we yell for him to come back, choosing instead to bolt at high speed in the opposite direction). We did finally let him off-leash to play with the other dogs when they were running around the yard, and he immediately took off full-bore for the fastest dog, trying to herd her and play-growling the whole time, which is hilarious because his “growling” sounds exactly like trying to start a car with a dying battery: RowrRowrRowr. Then he got overexcited and started sprinting around at 100 mph and decided to take a flying leap onto his camping chair, which obviously wasn’t bolted to the ground, so he hit it hard, sent it flying and then did a nifty barrel roll while we laughed our asses off. He’s the best dog ever.