This will be a photo essay more than a full accounting of the trip. April met us at the beach for a week where we shared a rented house (that is the North Carolina thing to do for summer). Emerald Isle is south of Morehead City and faces south so the beach has full exposure all day.
The highlight of the trip was the girls and Josh being able to watch a sea turtle nest hatching. This is of one of the last turtles making his way down to the ocean after most had already made it. You will see other videos of hatching sea turtles on youtube if you go directly to the video I posted:
Friday, July 31, 2009
Ok folks. I am going back to school in a few short weeks. I know this is breaking every copyright law on the books but I wanted to share a piece from a fabulously funny author Patrick F. McMannus. This portion comes from a chapter called " Silent but Deadly". I want to run an experiment. First- who finds this funny? Secondly and equally as important, who is reading this blog? Here goes:
The event in question began shortly after my family had stuffed itself with the typical Thanksgiving dinner. I lay suffering on the couch, in deep remorse over my recent gluttony and regretting that I had asked my former girlfriend, Olga Bonemarrow, to go to a movie with me that evening. I couldn't even consider breaking the date, because it was my first one since Olga had broken up with me the last time. She severed our relationship, as she had explained, because she thought we should each start dating other people and also because I was insensitive, inattentive, inane, ignorant, and gross.
I vaguely heard my grandmother call to my mother, " What do you want me to do with all this leftover turkey gravy?" Mom replied, "whatever." I then heard Gram open the door to the utility room, where Strange my dog resided during cold weather. If it occurred to me that it might be a bad idea to feed turkey gravy to a dog, I don't recall, maybe because I could foresee no consequences for me.
The next parameter of the disaster was a mountain car my friend Retch Sweeney and I had bought together to use on our camping trips. The car had come without a backseat, as well as without brakes, headlights, taillights, spare tire, various windows, tailpipe, muffler, front fenders, and assorted other accessories. The partition between the backseat and the trunk had either rusted out or been been cut out by us; I cant' recall which. It was inside this convenient space that we stored all our camping gear-sleeping bags etc. and in which we sometimes slept, out of concern for the elements. We named the car Piss Peabody in honor of out favorite high school English teacher.
Now you must visualize this next part, as I myself had to do in reconstructing the scene of the crime. Strange is slurping up- " yowp, gobble glub slurp choke glub" his massive serving of turkey gravy augmented with other Thanksgiving edibles. Finished, he is booted out into the cold by Gram. Shortly thereafter, he begins to inflate. His skin grows taut over his body, which expands until it gradually envelops his legs up to his paws. Only half of his tail protrudes. He takes on the appearance of a small harry zeppelin. Slowly, he rises off the ground. Using his paws as flippers and the tip of his tail as a rudder, he floats around the house until he arrives at Miss Peapody, the mountain car. He enters through an open window. The he snuggles down under the camping gear, and presumably, goes to sleep. He is a ticking time bomb.
What happens on the date you may ask? Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion.
Now that much of my day is spent digging ditches, pulling stubborn weeds, and trying to squeeze labor out of my young boys, I have a lot of time to think. As often is the case, I tend to have time warp come over me and I am carried back to 5 Lockhart Circle and I am about oh, 10 years old. I am holding one corner of a rediculously large tarp surrounded by Dad, Clark and the occasional guest appearance of a very young Bub who shows up mostly for comic releif.
It is a gorgeous October Saturday with an explosion of color and a chill in the air. My mind is running over the myriad of places I would rather be than doing any manual labor. The art of hauling large heavy loads of leaves down the driveway out to the front strip without spilling the contents is a lost art form.
As my mind zooms to the present, I am suddenly aware that Ethan can't be seen or heard. He is no dummy and a clone of me at his age. He has wisely ducked down into a ditch where he can't be seen or heard and is silently sqeezing dirt together into one fantastic mudball. I ask him to pull a few weeds while he is contemplating the nature of mud and he humors me by pulling oh 5 weeds and ducks back down into his ditch. I let out a mighty sigh and focus on Ben. We are sweating freely now that it is 10 am and we are stringing up the tomatoes. Ben peppers me with a barage of philisophic questions regarding good and evil, the quality and speed possessed of various brands of scooters and my take on how Star Wars characters evolved. I can't recall ever having these types of conversations with my siblings or dad. I do remember trying to convince dad that leaves tend to keep falling to the ground and that instead of using every Saturday during the fall to collect the leaves, we should only spend one.
I have also contemplated the nature of strength as it relates to fathers and sons. I knew dad was tougher than me when I watched him reach bare handed into the kitchen sink and pull out the dinner dandruf. That was something I wasn't capable of. I told my boys that I would pay them $20 the day they could out-work me. There was a glimmer in their eyes for a moment and then when we started to work again the glimmer soon faded.
Well enough for now. Our tomatoes are starting to turn and hopefully in a week or so I will have them coming out of my ears. Right now my anger has been kindled by the gang of pheasants that have laid to waste many of my ripe and even my unripe tomatoes. I am currently working out a plan with the division of wildlife resources for compensation.
I just looked back at my last letter/post and realized that it has been one month to the day since I last wrote. I have good intentions but then get sidetracked.
Well, I left off that Aaron and I were about to leave on our 50 mile hike. I like to think that I had a lot to do with evangelizing the high adventure that lay ahead as our ward fielded six out the twelve boys on the stake trip. Last year we hiked 50 miles south into Damascus VA, and this year we started 50 miles south in Tennessee and hiked 50 miles north into Damascus. You may have heard of the Virginia Creeper trail, a former railroad bed trail that is gently graded so that groups can be shuttled the top of the trail and enjoy almost 50 miles of downhill fun. So it is a nice outdoor recreation-friendly town nestled in the mountains where the Appalachian trail passes right through the old downtown.
We left Apex at 4:00 am and arrived at "Dennis Cove" at about 8:30. We all chilled out while the drivers took the van and my truck into town, and the drivers were shuttled back to the trail head. Up there in the mountains it stayed about 85 degrees, shady, and not very humid. The first day we hiked around Wagauga Lake, managed by the Tennessee Valley Authority (if you remember your history lessons -- it rang a bell for me). The first two days were much harder than I remember last year being -- we were up and down, and a few of the boys were not psychologically broken in to realizing that they could actually make this trip. One would walk for about 2 minutes and then drop his pack to rest for 5 on the uphill sections, so it was taking much longer than it needed to. Luckily day 3-5 would level out as we hit the ridgeline of the mountains and stayed on top.
The section of trail we hiked is late in the season for "through hikers" who are trying to hike the entire trail to the north. Our first night we shared a campsite with a group of 5 or 6 more casual (or late) hikers (one guy does 100 miles each summer) who were staying in the shelter. (About every 7 - 10 miles on the Appalachian Trail there is a small shelter with three walls that is usually 8'x10' set up so that through hikers who don't carry tents can sleep out of the elements). As we had our campfire, had a devotional, and sang some hymns, one of the girls who was hiking with her violin (very hippie-ish) was interested to hear about how we were a church troop, and hushed her trail-mates as we finished our prayer. As we settled down (everyone in our group was exhausted) the through-hikers were still carrying on. I went over and told them that we were going to be getting up at 6:00, and I would *try* to keep the boys quiet. They quickly realized what they were up against and quickly quieted it down.
The first day on the trail Monday was Aaron's birthday. We had celebrated his birthday at home on Saturday where he had asked for a new skateboard (he had gone through about 4 boards since the previous Christmas). But I knew that it is a drag to not celebrate your birthday on the actual day. I got a jumbo cupcake from the grocery store. Since I knew the frosting on it wouldn't keep, they sold me a frozen blank which I carried in a small plastic 1lb deli cup to keep from getting smooshed. I then squeezed out some icing from a ziplock with a corner cut out of it, topped it with a candle and had instant birthday cake for him. I had also bought a freeze-dried ice cream sandwich or Neapolitan bar from R.E.I. to give to each of the boys for his "birthday party", trail style! He was pretty surprised, at least I think.
The second day we hiked over the Watauga Lake dam, which was one of only two really nice views. The rest of the time we were hiking under the canopy of trees (mixed blessing, because at least there was no sunburn to worry about, but everything looked the same). The rest of the nights we had more room to spread out at the campsites, and the boys adjusted to the schedule and rigors of the trail. Last year we did 7, 11, 12 13, and 6 miles respectively, but this year it was just about 10 miles each day.
Aaron playing stick-pull with one of his friends. The reason I posted it to youtube will be obvious about 12 seconds into the clip:
The low point was the 2nd night when Aaron forgot to take his allergy pills and woke up with clogged sinuses. He didn't recover until over 24 hours later. I just remember coming over to see him with his head hung over watching his sinuses drain down to the ground in front of him because he had run out of tissue. :-( I gave him my roll of toilet paper and then had to borrow from others the rest of the trip. I felt so bad for him. I just wish there was something I could have done for him.
The last day we had 10 miles to hike down to Damascus. At one point we came around a ridge and the sky looked black. We dropped our packs and pulled out our rain gear and pack covers and braced for the worst. it was just a black cloud hanging around down by the mountain, but it never rained. I talked with a father who hiked the section to the north we did last year who was out the same week as we were. He told me how they got rain dumped on them every day almost. We didn't see a drop the entire week! So we were quite fortunate, because I can only imagine how miserable it can be to be hiking in we boots, trying to set up on wet ground, and trying to cook in the rain.
We arrived home safely and Aaron was glad to be home. The younger kids got out of school for the end of the year-round classes ending for a week break around the fourth of July.
Since I don't do that many fun things with the older kids (I do stuff they are not interested in), I will take whatever praise as a father that I can get from the little kids. I had Friday off and I took Olivia and Levi out to lake in Cary where we rented a canoe and paddled around the lake in the Sun. They could only remember going out on paddle boats so they were really into learning how to canoe. It was very windy so it was a breeze to get to one of the lake, but a royal battle to keep the canoe headed in a straight line against the wind to return to the shore where we had put in. It is also difficult being rear-heavy with the two light-weight guys up front! They got to play on the playground and then we had a lunch buffet at the Chinese place near us that has a sushi bar (Levi still likes the California-roll type sushi)
I think most of us went to the pool on the fourth, and then we went to our friends house for a chicken and hot-dog cookout. Their home-schooled son is 15, was one of 268 in the nation to score a perfect 36 on the ACT composite (he missed on reading question). We went to our usual spot to watch fireworks with those friends and ran into two other families from church.
The next week Aaron went to scout camp for a week while the younger children went back to school. They were so excited to get back to school, but Olivia mentioned that it didn't quite feel like she was a fourth grader yet. Levi is pleased that Olivia's classroom is his 1st grade "book buddy" classroom (they come in and help them read once a week or so). Dawna had a Friday evening "Bunco" night while Aaron was at camp and suggested that the little kids might like to go camping. Maddie "wasn't in the mood" for camping and declined to come, so she stayed home. Sooo, I packed up the kids and we went to a really nice park outside Raleigh by the airport. We had hotdogs, smores, and rice. I was trying to remember the story of "Tailey Poo" from the "Short and Shivering" story book so I called Maddie at home and asked her to skim the story and tell me the punch line so that I could tell the little kids. She very firmly declined to help me because "she was home all alone until mom returned." The next morning we hiked 2-1/2 miles down to a lake and got home about the time that Aaron returned home. They were pretty well spent!
I am sorry that I don't have the strength to get us up to date -- Aaron and Dawna attended a joint stake youth conference at East Carolina University last Thurs-Sat (they stayed in the high-rise dorms, Brad Wilcox was the guest speaker). Then they drive up this morning to drop Aaron and a friend up to EFY at Southern Virginia University for a week for further spiritual indoctrination!
We look forward to meeting up with the Andreasons at the beach this weekend (Maddie has been packed for a week now and is counting down the days on the calendar). We also hope that Logan, Emily, and River will be able to make it down as well!
Love,
Clark and the NC Sessions
P.S. I have been watching the original Star Trek movies with Olivia and Levi (who surprising like them a lot!). In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Kirk and company track back to 1986 San Francisco to save the whales. When explaining Spocks bizarre and alien behavior to a 20 century San Franciscan, Adm. Kirk explains "he went to Berkeley and took too much LDS during the sixties." Levi then perked up "LDS, that is my name!!" I then had to explain the joke to him, after which he started chanting "LSD, LSD" under his breath until I then corrected that behavior!
For the last few weeks, we have been on Summer Holiday. After the last day of Charlotte's preschool, I was so determined to stay busy, I went out a did something every day that week.
One day I found a place that laminates and got my Family Home Evening activities all laminated. While at this store, Christoph needed a diaper change. With Isaak strapped to me, I found a restroom for both men and women. There were two men with their feet in the sink and water was all over the floor. (Muslims must wash their feet before prayer time. At bigger malls, they have shower areas with special areas just to wash your feet. All the malls have mosques inside of them. The call to prayer is broadcast over the loudspeaker.) I asked where I should change a diaper in all this wet floor. They took a squeegee and drained it away. Needless to say, it was not a very pleasant experience.
I found some used toys for sale on a website like Craig's List. I went downtown to someone's apartment to pickup these toys and afterwards went to the largest mall in town. Doing this in the heat and with all three kids really does me in. Everyday we did something and it was quite hot that week. By the end of the week, I was exhausted. It was compounded by the boys not sleeping well. I was waking up at 5:30, often when the sun rose or the first call to prayer goes off at the mosque behind our house. Our latest attempt at getting more sleep has been getting blackout curtains, putting foil on the windows, and putting the boys in the same room. Sleeping is improving.
Christoph's new favorite game is hide and seek. I was surprised how still this two-year-old holds when we hide with him. Whenever he is found, he screams at the top of his lungs like a girl (of course imitating me or Charlotte) with a big smile on his face.
We had all of Karl's coworkers over for the 4th of July weekend. They guys grilled up steaks while it was 111 degrees outside. The price they pay for decent meat! On the actual 4th, we had a cook-in with our neighbors from the states. They are an observant Muslim family with a 10-year-old and 8-year-old and she's expecting their third child. My LDS neighbors and our family were who participated (actually, probably the only other Americans on the street). We all commented on how comfortable we feel around each other because our cultures are so similar. We are all family-oriented with conservative values. We don't drink alcohol. We are careful with our children and what sorts of things they watch, listen to, and read. All in all, we commented on how nice it is to have each other for neighbors. They actually excused themselves upstairs during the final call to prayer to pray as a family. How cool is that? After dinner, the guys were jamming in their music room with drum set, keyboard, and guitars. After the summer, I think we should put together a neighborhood band.
Our compound is a ghost town. Most people leave on holiday during the summer. Our church meetings meet only for two hours because we don't have the attendance to staff it completely. I have been leading the music in Primary. Karl has been teaching the two young men with eight leaders listening. It is mostly men who are still here, because the women and children take off after school is out. It is sad to see these poor lonely dads are passing the sacrament on Fridays.
Last Friday, there was a sandstorm on the way to church. It was very windy getting in and out of the car. We yelled to the kids probably too dramatically, "Hold on to our hands. It's a sandstorm!" Charlotte overreacted and that made Christoph start crying. On the way home from church this week, Christoph fell asleep. Charlotte was talking and mentioned the word sandstorm. Christoph bolted awake crying, "Sandstorm? Sandstorm?" It obviously made an impression on him.
So, we haven't been doing so much during our summer break. Staying home has been kind of nice. We haven't had to go anywhere, and in the heat, I don't really mind. We have been doing things with other church friends, but not huge expeditions. It is such a sweet time to have the kids play together, read together, put puzzles together, do art projects together, make bread. It is a magical time of life for my little preschool family.
Isaak broke his first two bottom teeth, and we have started feeding him solids. Life is good.
River met his great-grandma Briggs in Spokane. (Anabel's mother)
River likes hanging out with Gigi.
River in front of the Bellagio and Cesar's Palace for a little trip to Las Vegas.
Eating at the North Rim.
