10 Years+brownie camping!

Friday was our 10 year wedding anniversary. Wow. That makes me feel REALLY old to say that! We spent the day emailing each other back and forth reminiscing about all the little things that went wrong on our wedding day....NOW we can laugh. On THAT day, however...I wasn't amused when the DJ introduced us as Mr. and Mrs. Kurt Herman! (stupid DJ!) But aside from all the little things that happened, here we are, 10 years later, with 3 kids, just as happy as we were then...if not more so. And since our trip next month is our present to each other, we didn't have any real "special" plans for celebrating the actual day of our anniversary, nor did we get each other any gifts....but we figured we should do SOMETHING to commemorate the actual day....so we got tickets to the ballgame, a sitter (thank you uncle Dean and auntie Stacy!) to spend the night, and a hotel room downtown in St. Louis. So off we went for a night out. Why is it that nobody can operate my camera? This shot took 3 attempts.

After watching what everyone in our section deemed the WORST GAME EVER of Cardinal baseball (seriously, I've never been so disappointed in my beloved redbirds! I refuse to even write the score....you can look it up. The highlight was my nachos. And seeing LaRussa get ejected for arguing...always entertaining!), we took a carriage ride around the downtown area. We would've liked to have gone down to the riverfront, but it happens to be flooded at present, so that wasn't an option. We still had a great time.....the weather was perfect for a relaxing ride around the city. We learned a lot of history from our driver, and saw parts of St. Louis's downtown we'd actually never seen before (and I got that cool shot you see above of the courthouse and the arch.....not bad considering the horse didn't want to stand still for me to take that and I had to stand up in the carriage to do it!). After the carriage ride, it was getting pretty late, so we went back to our hotel and to bed. We actually had to be up fairly early in the morning so we could get back home in time for this:

T-ball pictures! I got yelled at mightily by the photographer's staff for taking this shot. I told her to stick it, that I'd given her PLENTY of money to purchase photographs already, and if I wanted to take snapshots of the process, I could and I would. BLAH! But don't they look cute? Go Bulldogs! And yes, somehow Karl ended up as an assistant coach....you show up for practice and you end up wearing a hat and being a coach! He loves it though...it's something he and Matthew get to share together. After pictures, we headed back into town to get Zach's "summer haircut"...meaning Karl was sick of the "precious moments" hairdo I've been having him sport because it's the only way I can keep him looking somewhat like a baby! Zach HATES the barber too, so that's another reason I've been avoiding it....I hate hearing him cry! But I finally relented into getting his hair cut shorter...not buzzed off like Matthew's, but it's close! Not a baby anymore!

Poor Zach, he was SOOO not happy! Then after the haircut, we headed home to pack for our wild night of camping, which of course was a mini-adventure.....3 kids, 1 tent....what do you expect? Everyone knows I'm not that fond of camping...I know some people love it and go like every weekend, but to me, it just seems like way too much WORK.....getting the bedding/food/tent/etc and then dragging it all somewhere......I'm like, 'Where's the Hilton and the nearest Denny's?" Thankfully, since this was the troop's first "campout", it was in one of the girl's backyard.....which was a selling point to me, because indoor plumbing access is deal-breaker for me. I have my limits. I refuse to rough-it THAT much!

The first bit of fun was said tent itself (the blue one on the left). It was brand new, bought specifically for this campout, 'cuz the instant we heard about the brownie troop doing this campout, Karl insisted on a new tent....as if he needs a reason to run to Cabella's? It took like 6 of us to get this monster of a tent put up. And it never ceases to amaze me that even though everybody that knows us knows I have somewhat of a "mechanical sense".......they still won't listen to me when it comes to stuff like this (uhm, especially MEN). So I just let them mess it up then told them they did it wrong once they were done and how to fix it. Fun for me anyways!

The girls did some fishing, played in a sprinkler (it was pretty hot out in the sun....no A/C...another thing I don't like about camping!), then just chased each other around giggling like 7-year-old girls do! And of course there were smores later on! DUH! That was my only reason for going.......ahhh.....I love smores!

The girls ended up in a tent together.....I ended up making Alaina get out of said tent and into another one around 11:30PM 'cuz they wouldn't stop giggling....which was keeping Zach awake...which was keeping ME awake.....which wasn't making me happy! So needless to say, it was a sleepless night out in the wild. Oh, and there was a little too much excitement over some distant coyote howling.....ah, the drama! Once everybody finally went to sleep, all was well....around 2AM! Zach woke up at first light though (uhm, 6AM?), so it was a short night and I was ready to pack up and head back to civilization (5 miles down the road!) So a fun campout.....I'm never going to love camping....and camping with a toddler just ain't all it's cracked up to be. But I'm sure we'll be doing it again....when Zach's a little older!

Alaina and her fellow brownies had a good time though, even if anti-camping mommy didn't!!