Camping with the nastiest dog ever.

This weekend I met my sister and her family at Tippecanoe River State Park in Winamac. We do what I call faux-camping. They have a camper, complete with A/C and beds. There is still nature,sun, dirt and campfires, but at the end of the day you crawl into a somewhat comfy bed and A/C which is what separates camping from faux-camping. :-)

The campground was not the most exciting one I've been to. Admittedly, it is Northern Indiana which isn't as picturesque as areas to our south. It didn't have a pool, which changed the tone of the weekend. Both Colby and Katlyn are water bugs and would have stayed in pool as long as we let them.

I was struck this weekend at how very little "kid" is left in the kids. Colby is just past 8 1/2 and Kate is just past 6 1/2. We were close enough to the park that they could go on their own. They dress themselves. They can open and close the camper doors (which wasn't true for Katlyn last time I camped with her!) Colby is well on his way to developing that special skill set guys have for not listening and paying attention to detail.

Most of what we did this weekend was things I've done on past trips with them. Things I had seen, or knew what to expect except for.....the dog. One of my very first blog entries was about Diesel. Diesel was quite ill and not sure if he would be much longer for this world. He has since recovered, except for a bacterial infection on his skin that keeps coming back. It makes him break out, and then scratch where it itches, which opens up spots on his back, and...you get the picture. He loves to be petted and cuddled and loved on. He spent most of the weekend trying to get us to pet him and we spent most of the weekend trying to avoid petting him. Poor Diesel. Not the sharpest crayon in the box, but aside from skin issues, really a funny, enjoyable little dog. Diesel did a lot of charming things this weekend. He earnestly rooted around in the grass, eating--we aren't sure what--and then make a horrible coughing noise and spit it all back up. He'd usually wait until your leg or foot was close enough to anoint. He usually laid in this position:



which let him soak up the maximum amount of dirt. He'd lay with his slobbery mouth on the ground and his tongue hanging out, usually resting on the earth. The result was a black tongue, and dirt beard hanging off the edges of his mouth. Here's a video of wonder-dog playing with his football:



His best story was the hike we tried to take. We head out of our camp site and literally get 4 campsites down and he needs to poop. Right away there is something to carry with us for the hike. He is a fairly lazy dog and there was doubt as to whether or not he would hold up. We get on the trail, which has roughly 7 million hungry mosquitoes hiding in the bushes ready to ambush the latest humans who venture into the forest without the benefit of bug spray. If you kept a certain pace the bugs were bothersome, but not terrible. Unfortunately that pace was 8.7 miles per hour. Katelyn couldn't keep the pace and Jami was the only one sacrificial enough to stay back with her. Slowly though the dog slowed down. Slower. Slower. Slower. Eventually Katelyn was poised to pass him. We were all miserable and decided to ditch the hike and go back. The dog made it back to camp and then passed out under the trailer in complete exhaustion, and tried to cool himself down. We were gone for about 30-40 minutes.

There were other memories that didn't register on the grossness scale.

Katlyn celebrated her graduation from Kindergarten:



Morning at the Murray campsite. Colby is up, still in him pajamas, and reading. He gets that from me, I think :-)




This is kind of like where's Waldo. Can you spot the sleeping kid?





Nothing is better than waking up to the grinning face of a wiggling 6 year old who is just soooooooo happy that you finally opened your eyes, so that she can begin interacting with you. For Kate, interacting is touching, rolling on, poking, cuddling, crawling on, tickling, wrestling, giggling--even at 7:00 in the morning.

And here's one more for the road. This is the please, please, please feed me look. Literally. I was holding a treat up to get him to pose for the shot.