Where the Wild Things Are

This last weekend our church group decided to go camping as an early Father's Day present to the dads and for a little fun time for the rest of us. As I packed the bags and precooked most of the food, for one reason or another every other family in our group had to back out of our trip. Disappointed but not deterred we decided to make this a fun family excursion and fun is definitely what we had.

Now camping with a scrapbooker and a scrapbookers family definitely yields different discussions than most might have while camping. As each scene of the day would unfold, and I of course holding the camera so I wouldn't miss one moment, I would think about the title to this picture or the overall title to the entire layout or layouts as it may be, that I would create to commemorate this special occasion. My kids even started throwing out titles but I think the one we all agreed on was the title to my posting - "Where the Wild Things Are".

Now as most of you have met my four wonderful children, you know that that could be the title to my life but this trip showed us different "wild things" and lots of them.

Here are only a couple samples of what we encountered, not mentioning the little mouse we found under our tent as we packed up at the end of our excursion or the beautiful yellow butterfly that seemed to follow us around no matter where we went - I am sure it was thinking "what wild things just entered my home?" The best though was an encounter with the geese (or as I always called them growing up - the ducks!"

When I was growing up, every year my parents would take us to Florida for a special family vacation. At the beginning our yearly trips we would always stay at the same hotel that had this small pond in the back. In the pond you could always find a dozen or more "ducks" wadding around waiting for a helpless little girl to come feed them. I was just that sucker! My wonderful father would go out and buy me a loaf a bread everyday to "feed the ducks". I would excitingly run out and start breaking off pieces of my bread to feed them. This worked well for several years, until one year, they saw me coming! I, armed with my loaf of bread and ready to say hello to my "ducks", headed out to the pond early one morning. This morning the ducks were ready and waiting and within minutes I was completely surrounded. They were jumping/flying at me, grabbing the bread out of my hand and hissing at me. Hissing at ME!!! I was bringing them food what were they hissing at me for???!!!?? I don't know but the screaming began and well, let's just say that was the last time I fed those dumb ducks!!!

OK anyway, back to last weekend. The camp ground we stayed at had a lake on it for fishing and since Bruiser has his own hunting license and dad just got one to fish with his buddies at church we decided to head down to watch the boys fish. Upon arrival to the lake, what do we see but swarms of beautiful geese. My girls were so excited to see these geese and ready to "feed the ducks!" Now since I am a bit older than I was those many years ago when I was so traumatized by the "ducks", I decided to put my big girl panties on and help the girls "feed the ducks".

Now what you can't see in this picture (and I was not about to walk into the ducks area any further) is little Tinker Bell (mini-me as I am told) on the other side of Princess getting up close and personal to these beautiful creatures. The girls were so excited to feed the ducks and they too were excited to be fed. But of course, there always has to be a grumpy goose on the loose and ours had it's eyes set on Tinkerbell. As soon as she pulled out the bread the dumb animal came running up and started hissing at her. Of course, the goose would eat the bread, balk at the other geese for trying to get its bread but then would start hissing at Tinkerbell again. All the sudden images of me at 4 of 5 years old, feeding the ducks and one jumping on my head, came rushing back into my head. Needless to say, Tinkerbell and Princess were quickly escorted back to the truck and away from the geese for the day.

Ah yes, memories, these are the memories that I would soon forget but hey, we scrapbookers have to scrapbook the good, the bad and the ugly - the ugly ducklings that is!!! Keep your eyes out for my layout commemorating these wonderful family memories, hopefully to be completed this year :).