We are back from the last camping trip of the season. No doubt about why, after the weekend we had. Not that it was bad, just that it was cold. I'm glad we got the camper heater working this spring because it was doing double duty with the ceramic heaters. It was the 3rd annual Marve's Birthday Wiessner/Pinkster/Knight Campout...add in Beavers this year as well...which is usually everyone's last time for the year. This time, however, we went to Camp Michawana instead of Yankee Springs. We took the kids out of school a bit early on Friday so we could get the camper set up before it was pitch black. It was pretty cool, and very windy, when we got there, but the campground was nearly empty. Ryan also was not there this time, as he doesn't want to hang around with the little kids all weekend any more. The kids played, and everyone else huddled by the fire most of the evening. Saturday was the camp's big end of season celebration; they had a 1-mile and 5k fun runs (all of the kids did the mile run, even Missy...but she went with Aunt Judy who was pushing Collin's wheelchair so they got to take a shortcut). I did my first ever 5k...more or less on a whim. I've run a few times this month on Wednesday nights, so I was in the mood to see what I could do. I almost won it. Not many were running it but still. My time was 27:38, just a bit over the time of the kid who won it. I started sprinting near the end, but not near enough, and ran out of gas with about 20 feet to go and was passed just before the line. Still, it was my first 5k, and I did run the whole thing except a short uphill section, and did better than I thought I would. Heh, I didn't have any proper running attire so I wore sleep pants and a sweatshirt for the race. There were some workmen clearing some trees and brush by the trail we ran, one of them was shouting encouragement to the runners going by. For me, he yelled, "Go...guy in pajamas!" In addition, the zipline and climbing wall were open all afternoon. I don't think I was supposed to, but I snuck my video camera while going down the zipline and shot a pretty cool video for YouTube. For some reason though, both of our kids were too scared to do it. Why Alex was scared was perplexing, since he did it 3 times last summer. Lauren was too scared as well. Alex did make it up about halfway on the rock wall. Missy got about a foot up before she was too scared to go any further. Later on there was cake and ice cream (and ribbons for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places in the races) from the camp, and the extended family had a big bingo party where the prizes were junk that Judy wanted to get rid of. The kids had a great time picking out prizes; they loved it. More huddling by the fire in the evening. Sunday we all made tie-dye t-shirts with the kids and packed up. So ends summer.

Thank goodness I have friends who know IT. Tuesday, the laptop gave Beth the dreaded Blue Screen of Death...and all I know to do, which is reboot, was useless. Nothing I knew to do helped at all, and it was just blue. Other people were telling me that everything on the hard drive is probably gone forever...photos, checkbook...gaaaaaah....luckily Brian does this sort of thing for a living...Wednesday I took the laptop over to his house during Kids Klub instead of going to the gym like I promised myself I would do but this is an emergency and the only time he could do it....and he worked on it for a little while with the system CDs, and today he brought it back to me at work good as new. Not even a single missing file.

Today was an interesting adventure. We took the Cub Scouts geocaching in place of a meeting at the school. Brad and I figured we had better do it early in the season while it's still light by 7:30 or 8 and still warm, and it would be a good idea to get the kids out of the school for the first time as soon as possible. So, we met over by the Winona Lake playground with some borrowed GPSs, and broke into 3 groups. I had the tigers, and a couple siblings. It was interesting getting everyone over the creek, for sure. We did some balancing and some lifting and managed to keep them all dry. We found one of the caches, but had no more time for looking before we needed to be back. As we were heading back, we passed Brad's group just arriving looking for the same one. It was funny to see Alex leading the way, holding the GPS. Turns out they never found it. Probably they just don't have the geo-sense yet. But there was an extra one hidden near the fire ring (placed my me, today) to give them a meatball to find in case of disappointment. We crossed the creek again going the same way we had coming...but Brad's group found the bridge. I think the kids really enjoyed it. We'll have to do some again in the spring.

Today was the church picnic. It was a really well-done affair, I thought. There were plenty of activities and games going on, most of which were won by Bob. Bob won the pie-eating contest, the ninja contest, the frisbee golf contest, and I think also the wheelchair race. I was entered into the pie-eating contest, but had some problems getting the pumpkin pie down and grossed a few onlookers out. Alex almost had a breakdown because he made it to the wheelchair race finals, due to help he got during the early heats, but nobody helped him in the finals and he lost. Bob consoled him by giving him the frisbee golf ribbon, which really made everything pretty much all good. Yesterday, Beth was out of town all day at a Beth Moore simulcast down somewhere near Indy, I think, at our old associate minister's church. She and a bunch of her friends went, and I told the kids we could get dinner anywhere they wanted. What did they choose? KFC. Oh well. After dinner was a birthday party for Katie (4), which we went to but were late to because we incorrectly assumed it would be at the Horbett's, because Beth told us so. It was at the McCoy's. The kids played on the trampoline most of the evening and got pony rides.