MaeLyn's Musings

When I was a child, I was TERRIFIED of dogs. I didn't have a whole lot of experience with them; we didn't have one. But the neighbors had two HUGE BLACK DOBERMANS . Whenever we were in our backyard, they would stick their noses through a hole in the fence and bark and growl as though we were invading their territory. As a missionary, my experience with dogs g r e w and I learned to tolerate them. I realized they weren't all out to bite me. Some were actually friendly . Over time, my terror has settled into a quiet, respectful indifference . I don't go out of my way to meet dogs, but if I happen to encounter someone with a friendly dog and the dog wants to come over and say hello, I'm okay with it. A similar looking dog to the one that chased me... maybe. This one looks a lot calmer. Today, I had left Peter at his school and was continuing my morning walk when as I passed one house, I watched a large, brown dog claw his way over the wooden fence from the...

"The house is quiet; the kids must be back in school," I hear myself think. So, yeah! The kids are in school. I'm back on the computer with time to spend (without a child standing at my shoulder asking how long until I'm done so he can get on to play Pokemon...) Not that I plan on spending a lot of time on the computer today, but I thought I should wrap up blogging about our summer before it is too far in the past to remember well. It has been a busy summer, I'll start by saying that. Mid June - Hannah, John and Joshua all got to attend our stake trek in Wyoming. They had a good time and I think it was a good experience for them. The following week was Peter's birthday , John got his drivers permit, we had 11 year old scout camp (see first two paragraphs  here ), followed by our two week vacation (See here , here , here and here .) While driving in the car on that vacation, I crocheted a bunch of minions which I gave to my nieces...

A few months ago, when Steven and I were looking at the summer months ahead, we decided that we wanted to go on a short family camping trip sometime this summer. Between trek, 11 year scout camp, our big trip to California and Arizona, boy scout camp, and high adventure camp, and the fact that July is generally a busy month for Steven at work, our summer was looking pretty booked. But we thought we could squeeze in a campout the week before school started as a "last hurrah". Steven did some research and reserved a campsite for three nights at State Forest State Park, about a 3 hour drive from home. Early last week we began our preparations for this campout. We made a menu plan, and then a food/equipment packing list, and a shopping list. I went shopping, and then gathered the food and stuff we would need for meals. I made a packing list for clothes that each of us would need, and each of us packed our clothes. Steven gathered the camping equipment and loaded the car, and We...