This weekend was the 2nd annual Knight/Wiessner/Pinkster family campout at Yankee Springs. We get Alex out of school at about 2 on Friday and I took a half day off, and we headed up a bit earlier than last year so we didn't have to set up in the dark. We were greeted by a nice rainbow arching over the entire area as we got there, and we got set up with plenty of daylight and had dinner at the site. We were on an asphalt slab in this particular site, next to John & Steph, and right along the channel from the lake. It was clouding up as it got dark, and at around 9 or so it very abruptly started pouring as we all sat around the fire (which went out). So everyone scattered to their respective campers and called it a night. It rained for a couple hours, the first time it has done so since we had the camper roof fixed, and it seemed to hold up well. All was dry inside. Saturday the kids all played together at and around the campground all day, including pulling and old disarded tire out of the lake, and finding a dead fish. I also got some caching in with Marve and Ric and John, all out on a bike trek of a few miles to get two caches in the woods. Saturday night, Judy and Neill surprised us by taking the kids to their cabin for a sleepover (letting Beth and me have a night of peace in the camper); they were gone until late Sunday morning. Sunday we all packed up and hit the road around lunchtime. Overall it was a very nice weekend. Alex missed his soccer game on Saturday, though.

We finally have phone and internet service back again after 3 days out due, it seems, to squirrels. The phone company came out and found some apparently chewed wires between the line and the house. Stupid squirrels.

Swim lessons started back up this week for the kids. Unfortunately, Missy graduated to a new level last time so she and Alex have classes at different times...5:45-6:30 and 6:30-7:00 on Mondays, which is quite inconvenient since Beth has Bible study Monday nights. So the kids have gotten to visit the youth center, which they look forward to since it has a Wii. Tuesday there was a meeting for joining Cub Scouts, which Alex was really excited about. We went to the meeting and he seemed to really enjoy it, so we're going to stay with it. Also this week was school pictures...and Alex got his new glasses just in time for them. He picked them out himself, and he looks a bit like Buddy Holly. But it works for him. Beth had a lingerie shower to go to Friday, Alex had soccer Saturday (some confusion about what time the game was...I had a deacon's meeting in the morning [which was more about installing the playground equipment], and Beth got the game time wrong and showed up an hour early, calling me back from the meeting to hurry and get there, only to find out that it was older kids in the white shirts playing there). We got Alex some soccer socks after the game because he seemed to really need them. Also today was Jenny's wedding. We went to the reception at a sport club somewhere out near Bourbon, which was very nice. Alex was a bit bored though, so we went for a walk outside and he discovered the skeet launchers, which for some reason were still turned on.

The house is back up to code. In replacing Missy's ceiling fan a couple days ago I got a shock...with the breaker open. And found upon further review that the upstairs circuit has a hot ground. Or something. Anyway, I couldn't find anything obviously crossed so I called in a professional, who spent the better part of a day and a half crawling through the attic, removing fixtures, and sorting wires until he found the source of the problem, which was a ground wire in a hall outlet bent over and touching a neutral screw. Two circuits upstairs with a common ground then had electrons going where they weren't supposed to. But now it's fixed, so we won't burn the house down or anything like that.

Saturday was Alex's first soccer game in the Pee-Wee league at Lincoln school . His team is West Ham United. Missy got lost...very lost...just before the game started. She wandered off to the playground just after we got to the game, and neither Beth nor I saw her go. Both of us were running back and forth, from one play area to the next, into the parking lots, calling her name, searching frantically, for several minutes. She was inside one of those big concrete pipes with 2 other little girls so she couldn't be seen from the outside, and she told us she said she was going but neither of us heard her. She spent the next several minutes crying after we found her because we were scared and that scared her. But she rallied. Erika came over to babysit later on. There was no movie we wanted to see so Beth and I just got dinner and did some shopping.

The weekend was unusual even before it started. We'd had plans to go camping with all the church friends for months now, and in fact we just got back earlier tonight from camping. But for a while it didn't look like I was going to make it. Last Thursday I was away from my desk, talking to someone in the hallway downstairs when the fire alarm went off. Everyone headed outside just like in the drills, but I heard some people from facilities saying it was the real thing. After waiting outside in the parking lot for a while I could see and smell acrid smoke coming from somewhere in the middle of the building. It turned out that there had been a dust explosion in one of the manufacturing cells and the fire was still going on. After about an hour and a half it was out, but nobody was being allowed back in and I didn't have my keys. Beth eventually picked me up after they announced that we should all go home because nobody was getting in any time soon, and there may not be work Friday. I came back around 8pm (after Renee's surprise birthday party at the church) to get my keys, and from the doors to my desk and back I didn't see another soul except the other guy who had also come back for his keys. I got a call later in the evening that work was cancelled Friday, then another call that I needed to come in at 7am Friday to assist with evaluation and disposition of all materials throughout the plant. A couple hundred people were in on Friday morning, and spent all day taking full inventory of all product, calibrated gages, manufacturing materials, etc., and whether it was covered or not, and what zone it was in, etc. The talks at the opening meeting made me think that I was going to be at work all day, every day, for the entire Labor Day weekend. So I spent all day Friday working in polymer molding, receiving inspection, and metrology, and by lunch I had called Beth to tell her that she would need to find someone to help her fold up and hitch up the camper without me if she still wanted to go camping, because I wasn't going to be able to make it at all for the whole weekend. I still thought I'd be there all weekend by dinnertime, when Beth called to tell me that she had had help with the camper, she was on the road, but the camper had popped off the hitch when she went over some railroad tracks and been dragged for several feet. Some nice folks behind her helper he get it back on and secured. It was only a few minutes after that call that I was informed I wasn't needed for the rest of the day or weekend, and thank you for your help, I could go home. So I dashed off to meet Beth and the kids (they were still at a restaurant). Yep the camper tongue jack was pretty bent. We quickly grabbed all my stuff and hit the road again, and made it to the campsite before dark. We got everything all set up and had plenty of time to sit around the fire. I was dreading another phone call all weekend but one never came. Saturday the McCoys came up to visit for the day and the kids all had a great time playing together. Almost all the kids, Travis, Brian, and I all went on a bike ride that must have been at least a few miles long...and Alex continues to ride his bike with no training wheels like a champ. Sunday the Myers and we went to the Blueberry Festival down in Plymouth, in which we were all pretty disappointed. Huge crowds for not much good stuff. We ate lunch in there, which was a mistake...you can really burn through money at that place as if it were a county fair. All we really wanted was camper signs for Judy & Neill and Mom & Dad, like the one we have. We found them, but the quality of the sign was not nearly as good as ours. Younger guy making it. Monday afternoon was checked out and headed home. Camping overall was great. Whatever mosquito control program they have at Potato Creek, it works... they have been savage this year but were hardly noticeable at the campground. It was never warm enough to swim, and we never went to the lake, but the kids had plenty of friends to play with so they left us alone. I think I'll want to get the heater in the camper fixed soon though (Keith took a good long look at it and couldn't find the problem), because the ceramic heater doesn't dry the camper out well enough.