Happy 4th of July to everyone. I sure am thankful everyday that I get to live in this great nation! And I am also glad that all my family lives here too :)
This last weekend we went camping and canoeing with a group of our friends from Bible study. One of the girls in our group was offered a job teaching in Virginia so she wanted to do this before she left - her name is Mara and she is one of the single girls in our group. We drove to the campground after work on Friday and got there about 7. There were 10 people total . Everything went well until it got dark, then the bugs started coming like no other. Our floodlight that we had hung from the tent cover had an inch of gnat like bugs dead in the bottom of and I an not exaggerating. It was so disgusting. After we sat around talking for a while we got to bed. We brought Dutch with us so we took him into the tent with us thinking that he would sleep. The whole night he was sniffing around and growling and stuff outside the tent - there were 3 other dogs in our group too. Anyway, i got up to use the restroom and I decided to take Dutch with me. This was a good idea until I got back to the tent. As I was giving him to Derek to take off his collar, somehow in the transition he escaped. After escaping, he proceeds to run laps around our camp ground and if you have ever seen Dutch run, it's basically a streak of white with slobber streaming close behind. Not really something you want to reach out to try to catch. Derek comes tearing out of the tent to catch him in his boxer shorts cursing the day we decided to get a dog. Dutch would run around the tents and then stop at one of the other dog's water bowl. When he did that, he would see us trying to corner him and take off running again. He did this, oh say about 10 times, What a great game guys - haha, catch me if you can!! The little weasel.... So on the 20th time stopping for water, Derek takes a flying leap and gets a hold of Dutch's leg mid air. Of course Dutch is in the process of running still so he's flopping around like a fish out of water. During this time, it's about 2 in the morning so we are trying to be quiet so we don't wake everyone else up. Derek can't yell at the dog so he is silently screaming profanities at the dog. Boy oh boy he was mad. On top of all of this, we borrowed sleeping bags from friends of ours. One of the bags we used, they used to let stray dogs sleep on, which they didn't tell us until this next morning. After we finally got Dutch back in the tent, he is covered in slobber and sniffing all over our covers and our faces. Derek finally proceeds to yelling at regular sound to get Dutch to lay down, which he does for maybe 5 seconds, then gets right back up and starts sniffing. Another thing added on top of all of this, we had forgotten pillows and decided not to bring any mattresses or padding of any type because I had thought to myself that the ground would be sandy and soft, so like a beach. After we went to bed, I quickly found that the ground was very hard and uncomfortable. We scrounged through everything that we brought and dragged out towels and clothes of any kind just to add some padding. I ended up using a towel as my pillow and then I put clothes underneath my side and it was still horrible. Derek was a gentleman and offered me him blanket which I took for a while but it didn't help so i gave it back. Needless to say, we didn't get any sleep that night - and I am not joking at all, none at all. I spend the whole night dreading having Dutch and Derek in the same canoe the next day.
The next morning we got up at the crack of dawn - about 10 till six, everyone kept asking us if Dutch was still alive and then everyone else had their own recount of Derek diving in his boxer's to catch Dutch. Dave called it the monkey jump and everyone else had a good time making fun of us and telling us how bad they felt for us for having such a dumb and rambunctious dog... we felt sorry for ourselves too. After breakfast, we cleaned up camp and headed to the canoe place. On our way there, Candace and Michael, who were riding with us, observed their dog - a little miniature greyhound, had a very swollen nose, so we drove to the little gas station to see if they could get some benadryl. the store had none so they decided to take their dog to vet and meet us at the river. so, they eventually found some Benadryl after assuming that their dog had been bitten by ants or bees. (it ended up being a bee sting) We get to the place called Bob's Canoes. Now, this place, is owned by some "good ol' boys" we're talking, the back woods folk that you hear about but never really see. We all put our coolers and supplies on a bus and then load up. About 5 miles down the road, the bus starts backfiring, at first the bus driver kinda makes a joke about it, and then it keeps happening and the whole bus starts smelling horribly of exhaust fumes and one of the guys in our group makes the comment jokingly about suing for lung damage. then the bus driver proceeds to tell us a story about a couple who were about 5 miles down the river (the trip is a 12 mile trip) and their canoe sprung a 1 inch leak in their canoe. They ended up having to carry their canoe up the sides of the river the remaining 7 miles of the trip. now, you would think that they would have received some sort of refund for their trouble plus some extras to encourage them to come back but they received no compensation of any sort. This is not giving us any encouragement as our bus is about to break down... We ended up put putting the rest of the way to the river but we did arrive safely.
So on the river, we tied Dutch's leash very closely to the middle of the canoe and he did just fine. He was very alert the whole time paying close attention to the dogs in the other canoe. We stopped frequently at the sandy banks to jump in the water and for the dogs to run around a little bit. One of the places that we stopped was a swimming hole with a rope swing attached to a branch that hung out about 15 feet over the water. All of us brave souls climbed the ledge that led to the branch witht the swing and we all started swinging. After I took my first turn, Robin - one of th guys that went with us, did this thing where he swung out and pulled himself upside down and then dropped into the water. I thought this was great so I asked how he did it and got ready to go but as i was walking out on the branch I decided to watch him one more time before I went. This time he did it, except he had too much momentum and ran his head straight into the tree - not so good. after that he held on for a few more seconds and then dropped. he turned out to be okay, just a little goose egg, but we sure were all ready to jump in and save him. needless to say, I did not try that little trick afterwards. two of the guys in our group had rented kayaks instead of going canoeing so derek got to try kayaking for a while and i canoed with our friend john. we got tipped once becuase we hit a log. since dutch was tied up so tightly, he stayed in the boat while john and i fell out - poor dog, he didn't know what to do. I ended up getting dumped twice, once with john and then once with derek - dutch fell out that time because he was so tired by the end of the day that we let him off his leash.
All in all it was a great trip. We did take some pictures with a disposable camera. My digital camera was ruined from waterskiing last summer so we decided not to risk it with derek's camera. Hopefully we'll get those developed soon and we can post some of those.
After we got home from the trip - about 4:30ish, we took showers and started to watch a movie and fell asleep. Neither of us woke up until 8 the next morning for church. Derek led his first Sunday school class on Sunday - it was on Job and his claims of his good works that he did and how they kinda parallel the 10 commandments. He did a very good job and I sure am proud of him :)
On Sunday, Joy asked me to play piano in her wedding. She doesn't know what songs she wants so I am waiting to hear from her on that, but it will be an outdoor wedding so we are going to pack my keyboard and hook it up to am amp and use that. Hopefully she picks easy songs cause I only have a couple of weeks to practice!
So that is the news from Pensacola. Tomorrow we are going bike riding with some friends and then I want to go watch the fireworks on the beach cause i have never seen that but we haven't decided what we are doing for that yet. We may jsut stay home, we have been so busy lately!
I sure love you all!
Shannon - I hope you are still doing well, soon enough little Henry will be here, are you ready?
Sharon
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