Float Trip!

This past weekend we went camping and saturday we did a 6 mile float on the Huzzah River.  We haven't been floating since before I was pregnant with the Munchkin and this was long overdue.  I am not much of a pool person (mostly public pools), but give me and river or a lake and I will hang out all day.  It always brings back so many fond memories of when we were kids.  We would pack up all of our stuff and head out to either my mom's parents property or my dad's parents to camp for the weekend.  We roughed it too.  We always stayed in tents and brought everything to cook our meals.  It was so much fun.  I am looking forward to taking the munchkin camping and bringing her up with the same traditions.  I will wait till she's a little older though.

So a few months ago, I sent out an evite, rounded up the troups and planned our adventure. We headed out Friday around 1:00 to embark on our 1.5 hour drive to our destination.  We were so excited when we got to our campsite.  It was literally right on the river!

Our Campsite right on the river!

Which was fantastic, since it was nearly 100 degrees.  We headed down earlier then everyone else with another couple, Kurt and Amber.  We set up our tents pretty quick, they set up theirs, then we wrestled with my sister and her husband's tent for about an hour.  This was the most ridiculous tent.  The instructions made no sense at all and we were all getting pretty frustrated with it.  Since they weren't coming down until after dark, she had asked if we would set it up for them.  She's so lucky she's my sister.  And you better believe we gave them some crap about it!

After we had everything set up, we were all pretty sweaty, so we changed into our suits and jumped into the river.  The water was crystal clear and felt so refreshing.  We hung out in the water for a couple of hours until other people started to show up.  We had an awesome group for the weekend, about 18 people and everyone got along fantastically.  Once everyone started arriving, we started to help some of them put up their tents and get settled.

For dinner we had steak kabobs.  Oh how I wish I had taken pictures of our food this weekend.  It was amazing.  Thursday night before we left, I marinated steaks in one bag and veggies (onions, peppers, tomatoes and mushrooms) in another bag.  Friday night, I assembled everything onto the skewers and we cooked them on the grill.  It was amazing!!

It was a little hot for a fire, but we made one anyway.  What is camping without a fire?  Ofcourse, no one sat around it.  But we had a fire damnit.  We didn't stay up too late since we knew we would be up at the butt crack of dawn when the sun started beating down on our tent.

I think it was about 7:00am when we finally got out of bed.  I forgot my glasses and needed to wash my hands before I could put my contacts in so I woke up Joe and begged him to drive us down to the bathrooms since I couldn't see well enough to drive.  Not a good idea to drive when all you see is really fuzzy shapes infront of you.  One of these days I am totally getting lasik.  Figures the one thing I forgot is the one thing I couldn't buy while we were there.

For breakfast, I fried up some bacon and then made some scrambled eggs in the grease.  Yum!  Gotta stock up on that protein and healthy fats for a long day on the river!  Then we headed out about 10am.

My sister and me ready to head out!

I am not a big fan of beer and I wanted something refreshing and delicious for my beverage of the day.  I also wanted to stay plenty hydrated, so I came up with the perfect plan.  I took a huge 2 gallon jug, filled it with ice, raspberry vodka, water and lemon juice and brought it with me for the float.  It was fantastic!  Maybe too delicious and refreshing, because that jug was almost gone by the end of the float.  In my defense, I was sharing it with plenty of other people.  Especially towards the end.  Our float took 7 hours, longer then expected, and everyone else ran out of beer.

My girl Amber and me.

My sister Amy and her hubby Jeremy.

John and Jessica and their dogs, Sadie and Kenya.

Erin with her boombox, I can't believe it survived the entire float.

Me and my sisters!

We met some of the most interesting characters along the way.  I kid you not, it was like spring break.  There was an insane amount of people floating on the river that day.  Probably more then I have ever seen on a float before.  Floating is a pretty popular summer event in Missouri.  The rivers are beautiful and there are so many of them.  One guy was running around in his pink underwear.  It was pretty funny and really gross at the same time.  We kept seeing him and he was always standing up and waving his junk around.  As far as I know he kept it covered up.  But still.  Ewe.

A shot of the crazy amount of people on the river.

We picked up a couple of stragglers along the way.  These were people that had somehow lost their group and needed a ride.  I am not sure how we kept ending up with them.  They were all completely wasted and it wasn't too hard to figure out how they got lost.  We picked up one guy named Joe, who looked so much like my sister's ex-boyfriend, it was scary.  He completely freaked us out.  My sister's husband knew her ex-boyfriend too, so I am sure he loved having his look alike in our boat.

Joe, one of the stragglers we picked up along the way.

My youngest sister Erin's boyfriend, Chad, earned the nickname that day of super athlete.  It was nice having him along.  He was pretty much in charge of steering the boat and he would jump up into trees or leap out of the raft to get us unstuck and push us in the right direction.  Thanks to him, the other guys got to be a little bit lazy.

Chad, our super athlete, and Erin

We lost half of our group about half way through the float.  We had 8 people in our raft, two (and two dogs) were in a canoe, and the rest in another raft.  We kept stopping and waiting for them.  After a while, we wondered if they were actually ahead of us, since we had spent so much time waiting.  By the time we finished, they were still an hour behind us!

My favorite sisters.

This was a tricky bend in the river where rafts would pile up.

Our Baywatch photo shoot.

Amber and me.

At the end of the float, right before we got off the river, there was a big cliff that people were climbing up and jumping off of. We watched a few guys in our group jump off and I wanted to sooo bad!  There was a time when I would have done it in a heart beat.  For some reason, ever since I had a child, I am so much more careful about that kind of stuff.  Being a parent is the most wonderful thing in the world, but I definitely miss being reckless sometimes.

We dragged all of our stuff out of the river and onto shore to load onto the bus to head back to camp.  Our raft was absolutely disgusting.  There was piles of trash and who-knows-what all over the floor.  We had to clean it all up and put everything in trash cans.  After we climbed onto the bus, I sat down and left some room for Joe.  Right before he got to our seat, a woman sat right down next to me.  I tried to tell her that my husband was just getting ready to sit there, but she was actually deaf, so she couldn't hear me.  So whatda gonna do?  Joe found another spot and it was no big deal.  What did suck though, was that she smelled absolutely AWFUL and she was facing the isle, while I was crammed up against the window.  She kept leaning back into me and rubbing her back on me.  She was pretty drunk and I couldn't help wondering who was in charge of this poor woman.  Not cool.

We arrived back at our site and Joe and I headed immediately for the showers.  Being on the river all day and drinking somehow left me with a headache.  After the shower, I took some aspirin and laid down for about an hour. Then I was good to go again.

For dinner I had made chicken hobos.  In foil, I wrapped up some marinated red potatoes, onions, carrots, I laid a chicken breast over that, then topped that with pats of butter, seasonings and crumbled bacon (which I had already cooked).  It was so easy and always makes the perfect camping meal.  I pre-assembled them the Thursday night before we left, so all we had to do was take them out, throw them on the grill and eat them up.  They were delicious!  Joe and I couldn't finish them, so we gave our leftovers to Chad, my sister's boyfriend.  He was so funny, he kept thanking me and telling me how awesome I was.  He was pretty drunk. 

After dinner, we stayed up and hung out for a while.  I tried to hang as long as I could, but after getting up so early, and such a LONG day on the river, I was exhausted.  We ended up going to bed around 11:30pm.  About 5:00am I woke up to the sound of people yelling at their children.  I couldn't believe it!  They were literally cussing their children out, telling them to shut the f%#$ up.  Classy.  Didn't they know it was friggin 5 am!  I felt worse for the kids though then I did myself.  They didn't stop either and eventually we gave up and got out of bed around 6am.  We were eager to get packed up and get back home anyway.  I whipped up some coffee, made some more bacon and eggs, then we got to packin.  We always bring alot of shit.  It's awesome to have it all, but when it comes time to pack up and leave, we usually start first and finish last.  Which is fine, I like to take a walk around the site after everyone leaves and make sure that all the trash is picked up and everything is back to how we found it.  I can't help it, I feel bad leaving behind a bunch of our trash out in the wilderness.

So we headed out and headed home.  One thing is for sure, I missed the munchkin soooo bad!  This was the first time she had ever stayed the night away from both of us.  She stayed with my mom and apparently she had a blast and barely noticed we were gone.  My mom kept sending my pictures to my phone all weekend and updates, which helped, but I couldn't wait to get back home to see her!  It was an awesome weekend and it was alot of fun to get away for the weekend, but it was so good to get back  home!

I bought a kodak mini video camera for the trip.  I wanted something besides my nice camera, to take on adventures like these and to take video of the munchkin here and there.  It worked out good for the float since it was waterproof, but the pictures were pretty crappy (as you can see) and I ended up returning it.  Anyone know of a really cheap video/camera that still takes decent pics?!

Our Camping Adventure

We made it back! The trip was an overall success. Although I had a pretty good time, I will NEVER go camping again while I am pregnant. As nice as it was during the day, it just wasn't worth getting through the night. I literally got up to pee 8 times Friday night! I am not exaggerating. I counted. I didn't get much sleep, so there wasn't anything better to do. By the time I started to drift off to sleep, I had to pee again. I would roll myself out of the air mattress, unzip the tent door, re-zip it behind me, then find a place off in the woods to pee, come back to unzip the tent door, re-zip it behind me, and crawl back into the air mattress. It's not easy getting this big 'ol pregnant belly in and out of an air mattress that is so low to the ground. The "bathrooms" (I use this term loosely here, as it is a wooden shack with a toilet sitting over a deep dark, incredibly stinky hole.) were too far away to venture off to by myself in the middle of the night. Saturday night, I cut off all liquids 3 hours before bed time, which did get me down to 5 pee trips.

We were planning on staying until Monday, along with one other couple, but by Saturday morning, I knew I wasn't going to make it that long. I decided that it would be better to leave on Sunday morning with everyone else. I felt bad, I knew the other couple wanted to stay another night, but they understood. It was just too much for a pregnant chick.

Other then the early morning rain on Saturday, the weather actually turned out pretty great. The sun was shining for the majority of our stay, and it was even nice enough to do a little swimming in the lake. I didn't swim, but I did stick my feet in the water, which I kinda thought was freezing, but it didn't seem to bother those with alcohol in their system. The boys brought their softball gloves and bat and there were washers.

I hate to say it, but camping just isn't the same when you are completely sober the entire time. Not only does it give you something to do at night when its dark and you are mostly just sitting around the campfire, but it makes getting through the night easier as well. I had never really thought about it before, I guess because I have never stayed sober for an evening while camping. But being completely sober, gives a whole new meaning to the dark when you are out in the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere.

First of all wondering off to pee is a little more difficult when sober. I never had any problems with this task before. Never even thought twice about it. You just go off somewhere, behind a tree or a bush, you squat down, ya pee, ya come back. When I am sober, I am suddenly really concerned about all of the bugs that might jump up and bite my ass or my cooter. Or the poison ivy that I might be squatting a little too close too. Or the ticks that are jumping out of the trees and landing on me. This has never been a concern before. I have no choice but to blame it on being sober. Also when you have a good buzz going, you can just crawl into the tent and pass out. When I am sober, it is suddenly more important to complete all of those bed time tasks, like brushing my teeth, washing my face, taking out my contacts. Then there are all those creepy noises during the night that I had never really noticed before. At one point, I could have sworn I heard someone off in the woods sharpening their knife! I was so grateful when I started to hear the deep, loud "jug-o-rums" from the chorus of the bullfrogs, which finally would drown out everything else.

Then there were the ticks. I pulled two out of myself. One in the crevice between my thigh and hoo-ha, and one from my right butt cheek. Amy found 8-10 on her, and almost everyone else got atleast 2. So far Amy has pulled 50+ out of their dog Louie since they got back. They had to take him to their groomer for a tick bath. Poor guy. After we got home, before getting in the shower, Joe found one on each of his butt cheeks. He didn't get the head out of one of them, when he pulled them out, so I had to go in after it with some tweezers. That had to hurt!

Other then during the night, and the ticks, I did have a really good time during the day. The lake was beautiful and it felt good to spend so much time outside enjoying nature. We made some pretty awesome food too. We had huge community breakfasts in the mornings and some yummy lunches and dinners. Saturday night, Joe grilled up some porterhouse steaks he had brought along for us. They were so good, they just melted in your mouth. Everyone brought sides to share, oriental salad, beans and twice baked potato salad. And of course, you can't go camping without s'mores.

Here is Matt standing on the "stage" playing some guitar for us.

Jeremy and Louie:

Dakota, guarding me and Joe's tent:

Slugger and Louie:

We had all 5 of our tents all lined up in a row.

Part of the 25 acre lake:

My sister Erin, sun bathing near the lake:

The Campfire:


Louie had to have his own chair too:

On our way to the campgrounds, we drove through the wreckage from a recent storm that came through the town. The damage was devastating. We were really worried about what the campgrounds were going to look like once we got there, and if it was going to be safe for camping. Somehow the campsites were still in tact, but it seemed all of the forest around it was covered with fallen trees and debris. If you click on the pictures to enlarge them, you can see far off into the background, all of the trees that were down everywhere. They were ripped out of the ground exposing their huge root balls. These pictures do not do justice for how much damage had taken place. I had never seen anything like it before.





I was so glad to get back on Sunday, to take a shower and sleep in my own bed. And since we came back a day early, it was nice to have the entire day on Monday to just hang out and relax. I hope everyone else had a great weekend! Now it's back to work. Boo.

Lets Go Camping!! (oh and a Tag! Your It!)

I am so excited for this holiday weekend. I have taken off work Friday and we are leaving in the morning to go camping!

I have never been camping while pregnant before, so this should be interesting. I absolutely love camping, but I have to admit, I haven't been sober for a whole camping trip since I was about 15. I know I will still have fun, but I am pretty sure I am going to be wishing I could have a little alcohol too. I am also a little concerned about the sleeping situation (and I am definitely bringing the Beast along!). Its going to be rough leaving the tent a gazillion times to pee. I have been seriously considering picking up one of those portable toilets at Walmart. Ya know, one of these:
Then I could get a little mini tent for it and put it right next to our main tent. Too bad they are $100 +, other wise I would get one fo sho. But then again if I did, everyone else would want to use it too and that would just be really gross. But then I would sound like a bitch when I told everyone else they couldn't use it. And I would get stuck cleaning it all by myself. Having to deal with my own waste is one thing, but other peoples? Yuck. So its probably better that I don't. Oh well.

Alcohol free and unrelenting bladder aside, I am really looking forward to getting outdoors and enjoying some nature. We will be camping next to a beautiful 25 acre lake. There are hiking trails around the lake and they keep up with the grounds very nicely. The park is run by the state, but the campground is in the middle of nowhere, in a tiny little town of about 420 residents and there are only about 14 camping sites total and hardly any one else ever camps there. There will be other people there this weekend, but mainly because its a holiday weekend and most likely the majority of the campers will be from the local town. There are no amenities here, no electricity, no running water, no showers. There is a bathroom, but the toilets don't flush, just a deep, dark hole. For me, this is the only way to camp. Otherwise what is the point? (Now having a big fancy RV to travel the county and see the sites is a totally different story - thats okay in my book.)

My sisters and I have been camping with our families since we were babies and we love it! We have been camping at this particular place since I was about 16. My sister Amy and I worked at McDonalds for years while we were in highschool and we became pretty close with some of the other kids that worked there. One guy's dad used to take him camping at this place when he was a kid and he started taking all of us. We camped there alot for a few years with all of our McDonalds buddies and other friends. We don't hang out with that crew much anymore, but we still go camping there and now take our husbands and other friends. Its a bit of a drive for a weekend camping trip (4 hours), but its worth it to have all of the privacy and beauty that this place offers. You really feel like you are out in nature and you don't have other campers you don't know camping 10 feet from you (like all of the places that are closer to home).

So wish my pregnant ass some luck... hopefully I will still be able to have lots of fun! Luckily Amy is pregnant too, so I won't be totally alone. That will definitely help to have a partner in crime. I will report back next week on all of our adventures and some pictures!

In the meantime... I've been tagged!


Bridget, over at Living in the Moment, has tagged me for a game of Tag! I'm it! Here's the rules:

Rule A. Mention the person who nominated you.
Rule B. List six unimportant things that make you happy.

I think I can handle that. Here goes... you've paid for the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge! Woo Hoo! (okay I might be a little excited that in a couple of hours I am off work for a 4 day weekend!!!) And on a side note, I think that saying "unimportant things that make you happy", is a little contradictory. If it makes me happy, I consider it to be pretty important.

1. Flip-Flops or Sandals. As soon as the weather gets warm enough, I rarely have anything else on my feet. One good thing about being pregnant during the summer is, atleast I can put my fat, swollen feet in some flip-flops.

2. Maternity Underwear. I seriously thought it was ridiculous to buy special underwear just because you were pregnant. And they looked so big - like Granny Panties! But then my little thongs started digging into my belly in the front right underneath my baby bump and I thought I would try out a pair. I haven't gone back since, and I have purchased enough to survive not doing laundry for 2 weeks.

3. Sleeping with the windows open. There is something really special to me about being able to sleep with the windows open. It only happens for two short periods of time, in the spring and in the fall, but when it does I seem to sleep so much better.

4. Twix Candy Bars. Mmmmm.

5. My new Pineapple Cutter. Seriously, this thing is amazing. I can have a fresh pineapple cut up and ready to serve, along with an in tact shell that could be used for a drink holder or to serve the fruit in, and all in less then a minute. I love having fresh pineapple, but always hated cutting them up. Now that I have this hand dandy contraption, we have alot more fresh pineapple around the house.
6. Resale Shops. I love shopping second hand. I really like coming across random resale shops in other towns and checking out what they got. I am a sucker for a good bargain.

Now I guess I am supposed to tag other readers. Well I am going to tag Everyone! I am running out of time and have to finish up some things at work before I can leave for my weekend get-a-way, so tagging everyone will have to suffice. Besides, its fun and I know everyone wants to do it!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. I look forward to catching up with everyone when I return from our camping trip!