The Elusive Camping Trip

Ahhhh, now I have time I can sit down and write about our camping trip. Let me just start off by saying that I do NOT care for camping at all! I don't like the bugs, I don't like sleeping in a tent, I don't like having to walk 1/2 mile to the bathrooms. I want a nice bed (even in an RV would be okay), I want a toilet nearby, I want a shower, I want a stove, I want electricty. I want the comforts of home. Sure, I like sitting around a campfire, talking, laughing and such, eatins S'mores, but that's about it. I went up there for two reasons, to scatter my mom's ashes and to see my family. And I'll put up with just about anything to see my family. Not anything, but just about.....

Okay, back to the story......

We left our house about 3:30 a.m. for our 6 - 6 1/2 hour trek up to Mammoth Mountain. Ugh...... I tried to sleep on the way, but I just couldn't. Oh well, I'll sleep later. I called my youngest sister about 6 a.m., once we got on the 395 to ask her where she was. Lone Pine! Damn!!! She was at least 2 hours ahead of me, and she left about the same time I did! Well, she is closer. She was so excited to get up there!

First day of camping is always the set up. Hubby was busy setting up the tent, while I was busy carrying EVERYTHING ELSE in the campsite! Hmmm....makes me wonder if he was "taking his time" setting up that tent.........

I was SOOOOOOO fucking tired that day!! I think I took a nap, I can't remember. Did I? Or did I take one the next day, or did I take one each day? Damn, I was so tired those days, I really can't remember!

Now we had all tried to coordinate who was bringing things, that way we would have everything when we all got up there. I would say that for the most part, we did have everything. Of course everyone made fun of me, because if they didn't have it, it was like "Oh, I'm sure Tina has it!" My eldest thought they were being a little mean when they were saying that, but they really weren't, I told her. They all just know that I wanted to come prepared. I brought a full sized broom for Pete's sake to sweep out my tent! I brought a standing shower tent so I could take a shower. I brought enough baby wipes to clean everyone off for a month. Enough paper plates for everyone. What can I say? Gotta love COSTCO!! And if they were being mean, well, you know what? Don't care! Bite me! I love my family!!! :D

Hubby set up the horseshoes that he brought, and the men DEFINITELY loved that! He took my eldest fishing with him, he got to relax some, read a book, watched a video on his video Ipod, and so on......

My eldest wasn't so keen on the camping when she first got there, but grew to like it after a couple of days, especially spending time with her cousin and our family.

My youngest??? Well, that's a different story alltogether! Let me first start off by saying that she is one that likes routine. She wants to know what we're doing days in advance, and will keep asking sometimes throughout the day. When her routine doesn't go as planned and there's not enough advance warning with it all, she can break down. And now while I don't think she is autistic, I do think she may have some autistic tendencies sometimes. I need to research that more though. Now, she can have a problem with dogs. That's not an autistic tendency, it's just a little girl not liking some dogs. Back at Easter, when we were up at my aunt's house, she was terrified of their german shepard, Burbank. She would be outside, and Burbank would be inside looking out the back door and she would freak out and start crying because Burbank was looking at her. Yikes! I did sit down with her and we sat next to Burbank for a long time and she got used to him, and now she just loves him! I think the size of Burbank scared her the most, because Burbank does NOT jump on people. He's a very mellow dog. Okay, back to camping.........

My aunt brought Burbank, my sister brought her dalmation, Lucky (which she liked right away), and then my youngest sister brought her dog, Clyde. Clyde is part Rhodesian Ridgeback, has some pit bull in him (but is a VERY NICE dog), and something else. Well, I guess Clyde was excited to see people, and came too eagerly to see my youngest and scared the living shit out of her. That was it. She wanted him no where NEAR her. Now, my sister couldn't keep her dog tied up the WHOLE time, and let's face it, my youngest needed to get to be more comfortable with Clyde. Not that I wanted to FORCE Clyde upon her.... but she did give Clyde a hug when we left, but of course someone was holding Clyde and daddy was holding her.........

The second night up there, was probably the best night I had sleeping up there. Too tired to freak out about mice and bears, got through the first night of no mice or bears, more used to sleeping in the tent. I did have a nap that second day were were up there too, now that I think about it, because my youngest sister saw me sleeping in the tent, pulled my other sister over to me and they both saw that I was sleeping the way mom slept when she took naps up there. Awwwwwww........... :)

Forward to the third day. Okay, now I'm in the groove, getting more used to it, even decided on not taking a shower in our shower stall. (It actually was a PAIN IN THE ASS to do that, the shower bag we had took up the majority of the top part of the tent stall, and to get the water to flow freely out of the hose on you (or should I say the TOP 1/2 of you), you had to squat down really low. Yea, nice picture, huh? Oh, and also the shower bag had sprung a leak so it was taped up with duct tape. Hey, at least we gave it a shot for the first two days!

So anyway, I just wiped myself down with baby wipes (lord know I brought enough of them!), used my sister's squirt bottle (and what a cute one it was too! She always has the cutest little gadgets. Even the spatula she brought was cute. I knew it was hers right off the bat!) to wet down my hair, and put my hair up again.

We all went up the mountain to sight see. My, what beautiful lakes and scenery they had up there! Here are a couple of pictures:


We went hiking down to the waterfall:



And hiked back up. That was a nice workout there though!

Afterwards, hubby and I took our girls, along with our two nieces to lunch. We thought we'd treat our nieces, since we don't see them that often.

Then we made our way back to the campsite. Hung around for a little bit, and my aunt and I drive back into town to get dinner. We decided to have hot dogs. Found hot dogs alright, but when we went to go get the buns, there were none! Yikes! My aunt was like, "Well, we'll just have to use bread." I wasn't giving up yet. I asked one of the clerks to look in the back to see if they had any buns, and after a short while, and him talking with a couple of people, magically he came out with enough buns for us! Yea! I KNEW my youngest would not be eating a hot dog on a piece of bread! So we made our way back to the campsite.

That's when things started going downhill. Shortly thereafter, it started raining. At first we thought, no big deal, we've been dealing with this every day since we've been here. It rains a little bit, then it clears up. Did that happen in this case? Of course not! It decided to keep on raining! UGH! I don't care for rain as it is, and I certainly don't care for it when I can't get under some decent shelter to stay away from it, AND be able to go to the bathroom without being in the rain! (As you can tell, I have bathroom issues and want the convenience of them!) (And yes, I even brought an umbrella!) So we made dinner in the rain (thank goodness we had two tarps to cover the picnic tables, for the most part), we were all wet though. I was just miserable by then. I wanted to go home right then and there! Of course I didn't. And, of course right after I went to bed (very early, I might add), it stopped raining! Go figure.........

Now we're on the last day of us being there (because I was going home THAT day - Monday - and I wasn't staying another night longer and have that possibility of more rain again!) Slept crappy that night too, but I did get to sleep in even more, thanks to my youngest child sleeping in as well! Hubby and I slowly packed up everything throughout the day, since we didn't leave until the afternoon. We left our tent for my sister and her family, since her tent leaked and they all had to sleep in the car the rainy night! :( We also ended up giving them the tent too because, as my husband put it to me, "Okay, Tina, now really, when is the next time YOU are going to go camping, and in a tent?!" Yes, he was right. It would be a long time, if ever, before I would go camping in a tent again. Give me an RV, a cabin, or even better yet, a HOTEL, anyday! LOL!!

We left our stove there too for them to use. My youngest sister will just bring it down next time she comes down. Oh! I forgot about the stove fiasco!!! Okay, 2nd morning we're there....I was using one of the stoves (we brought one and my youngest sister had brought my mom's) for something, and I needed to use the other stove, my mom's, which hadn't been used in a few years. Well, no one had used it yet, so we hooked up a propane to it and started using it. Well, part of it caught on fire a little bit. No big deal, we thought at first, it was just burning something off. Well, noooooooooo, that wasn't the case. We turned it off, and it was still on fire! AAAAAAAUUUUGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!! My husband grabbed it, threw it out in the open and yelled to everyone that it was going to explode! HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well, after a minute, it didn't so we started grabbing the dishpans and filling them up with water to douse the damn thing! Finally got it put out, and thank god it didn't blow up! Shit.......................................

Okay, back to the last day.........we then scattered my mom's ashes (see post below).........and then made our way back home, but not before stopping at the local t-shirt place to get our Mammoth sweatshirts. (Because you know you HAVE to get those while you're up there!) We were going to get the pull-over kind, because that's, you know, the "ones to have", but then we saw they had zip up ones and we all really liked those much better because we're more of a zip-up kind of family. (Yea, and a bunch of geeks to boot!)

Got home around 11 p.m., brought our stuff in the house and then I went to bed.

So there you have it. My, probably-last-one-I'll-ever-have-in-a-tent-without-electricity-a-bathroom-VERY-close-by, camping trip.

Ahhh......back to the real world...............................showers, a bed, a refrigerator, air conditioning, a bathroom in the same house I'm in, and most of all ELECTRICITY, E-LEC-TRI-CITY, ELECTRICITY................ :D Yea, I know, I'm a wimp. Bite Me.

Mom's Ashes

I will write more about our elusive camping trip later, but as scattering Mom's ashes was the main reason for our camping trip, it deserves it's own title and story.

The last day we were camping, was the day we scattered my mom's ashes. It was her wish that her ashes be scattered up at Sherwin Creek where she always went camping when we were kids, and then later on with my sisters and my aunt and cousins. I never went camping up there again after Junior High, as I didn't care for it.

It was about 3 p.m. or so, and everyone was at the campsite together. No one offered to start, so I went ahead and started. I decided to start scattering her ashes at the old campsite, where we used to camp when I was little. On our way to the campsite, my eldest started crying, along with my youngest sister. I comforted my eldest as we walked over there. Once we got there, I decided to scatter her ashes in a circle of some sorts, around the campsite. I went around the fire pit, asking questions about the campsite as we went along.

I would say that about 1/2 way around the campsite, tears started forming in my eyes and I started crying, realizing the full enormity of what we were doing. We had said goodbye to Mom in the hospital room, after her body stopped beating, and said goodbye at the memorial service, but it all came back to us again, as we were scattering her ashes, saying goodbye yet again, and reliving the day she passed away. Even though I know mom has been gone for a year and a half now, it just all came back to me, that my mom died. My mom is gone. I can't call her anymore. I can't hear her laughing at my sarcasm or silly jokes. I can't hear her call me "honeybabe" when I need it. I feel like an orphan. She can't watch my children grow up. My youngest will never REALLY know her. She won't be around to see my youngest and her antics and call her an awnry stinker. The hurt of being without her all came back.

After scattering some of her ashes at the old campsite, we came back to our campsite to continue scattering her ashes. We scattered some in the creek first. I started the line of ashes where the bridge over the creek ended, and continued in circles around the two campsites we were at. At one point when I was scattering them around the fire pit where she used to hang out with my sisters, aunt and cousins, I broke down completely and had to stop to compose myself and stop crying so hard. Both my sisters took turns scattering the ashes with me. While I was scattering I took it all in and watched everyone grieving and crying again. My aunt's boyfriend was embracing my aunt, my sister was with her husband and kids, my husband was helping my eldest and holding onto our youngest, my yougest sister was embracing her boyfriend, my cousins were grieving and even one of my cousin's friend, who came camping with us, was crying and she had never even met Mom.

After we had finished at the campsite, we went back to the creek to scatter the remainder of her ashes. My husband had suggested that we scatter the majority of them in the creek, that way they would dissolve, but not completely, as when they went to the lakes below, they would evaporate up into the air, making clouds and rain over Mammoth, so she would always be there. Everyone agreed that it would be a nice thing to do.

At the creek everyone took a turn scattering her ashes. My aunt (her sister), my two sisters, my two cousins (who always called her Auntie, even in their teenage years), and two of her grandchildren, my eldest and my sister's eldest. At one point the two eldest grandchildren were hugging each other to comfort each other. One of my cousins asked if she could keep some of Mom's ashes, and my two sisters and I agreed that it was okay for her to do that. I know my mom would have liked that as well. Plus me and my two sisters each have a small urn with a small portion of her ashes in it, that has a picture frame in front so we can put a picture of mom in the frame.

Once we were all done and I put the small portion left back in the urn to give to my cousin, my youngest sister took a can of Bud Light (my mom ALWAYS drank that) and poured it into the creek so that she could have a beer with her as well. I thought that was SOO incredibly neat to do!

Even though it's been a year and a half now since Mom died, going through the ceremony we went through has brought back so many emotions and sadness. I know the pain and sadness will lessen as time goes on though.........

Some Things Change, Some Things Stay The Same......

I was taking my two girls, along with the eldest's friend to daycamp this morning. My eldest's friend started talking about "The Ghost of Bloody Mary". Oh my goodness, I TOTALLY remember about that when I was their age! Talking about how if you closed your eyes really tight, spun around 13 times and said something about believing in the ghost of Bloody Mary, you would see her in the bathroom mirror. LOL!!!

Oh, and then she was talking about how if you had a friend lie down and then you push down on her and then you all can lift her up with just your fingers and she would levitate. I SOOOOOO remember doing that between 4th & 6th grade!

I just sat in the front seat driving the car and grinning, because I just find is SOOO fascinating how some "legends" just keep repeating themselves, and they seem to be around the same ages for each generation.

There's new technology out there, so many things out there that weren't created when I was a pre-teen, yet kids are still fascinated by "The Ghost of Bloody Mary" and levitating your friends at a sleepover.

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Ahhh.....what a weekend!!!

The Good...........Got a message from my attorney telling me that the court approved our request to end probate and distribute funds. YEA!!! Which is a good thing too, because we put my mom's house on the market on Friday as well!

The Bad.........Actually, it's sad, I think, my 16 year old cousin got married on Saturday. :( And no, she's not pregnant. Her boyfriend is being stationed overseas and they think that by getting married, she'll be allowed to go over there with him. Maybe not now, but maybe later. Well.....his orders are for "UNACCOMPANIED", which means NO dependents are allowed to go over. Has there ever been times when "unaccompanied" change to "accompanied" orders? Yea, sure, but I really, really doubt that is the case here. He is supposed to be going to Iraq after a short stint in Germany. I don't like that he urged her into wanting to do this as well, when I had talked to her a week prior and she said she was so unsure she wanted to do this. I think that if he really, really loved her and wanted what's best for her, he would WANT her to have the wedding with all her family and friends around. Heck, weddings ARE for the bride mostly. It upsets me that they didn't sit down more and really think about this. Take time, say a year or so, at least even wait until she's 18 to get married. She may think that I'm mad or upset with her, but I'm not really. I don't think that going into a marriage where he says, "Hey, if it doesn't work out, you can always divorce me" is a good thing. That's NOT what a marriage is all about. She is SOOOO young, although, granted she is definitely mature for her age, but she still is so young. She has never lived out on her own, she barely graduated high school, she hasn't experienced so much that there it to experience out there. Sigh.............................

The Ugly....................Well, I think that was expressed above. Really, no one was happy she got married, except for her and her now "husband". And that is truly sad. When people are crying at your wedding, not because they're happy for you, but because they're sad for you, how can that be a good thing? What's done is done now though. I guess we'll just have to see what transpires with this, you know? Let's just hope that the camping trip doesn't get ugly.

Military Life.........When you marry a military person, you basically marry the military. In his order of importance, the military comes first, and you are second. He is helping to defend our country and he needs to focus on that, and as a military wife, you have to be able to accept that. Now, if my husband got orders away from here (accompanied, of course, since he had a wife and two children, and the military knows that, and he's not trying to "sneak" a marriage in, when it would be totally denied by the military, had my cousin's "husband" done it the proper way), I would definitely go with him, but he also knows that I LOVE living here and he will do whatever he can, take whatever orders he can, to stay here. Marriage is a give and take thing, even if you're not in the military, and if you constantly give, and don't get to take, that's just NOT good. Yes, I put up with a lot, with the military, having my husband gone for months at a time, but it's something I accepted when we got married. Do I like it? Of course not, I want him home with us, but I know that this is what he has to do. I'm extremely proud of him and his accomplishments. But he also gave me my dreams come true too. All I ever wanted was a husband, kids and a house. And he was able to give them to me. Of course I helped in that too. But he also knows that I want things, I want to be able to do things, and he wants me to have those things. It's a give and take thing, Ying and Yang. We balance each other out.

We had both been on our own before we got married. We had gone through our "partying and wild phase" (starting in high school), and so by the time we did get married, we were ready.

You Say One Thing and then it Bites You In The Butt!

I was emailing with some of my friends today talking about how when you have more than one kid, they can play together, and then what happens? I hear crying and yelling not an hour later. Geesh! C'mon kids, cut me some slack!

Now my two are not that close in age, in fact they are 7 years apart. So yea, I can totally understand how it can be hard to "play together" at times. But when my eldest has friends over, my youngest wants to be involved SOOOOOOO much! So I have told my oldest that she does need to include her little sister. Even if she just gives her some small menial thing to do with them. Most of the time that works okay. But there are plenty of times when it doesn't work as well. My youngest LOVES routine. She always wants to know what exactly we're doing the next day. She has an amazing memory for being so young! She also has a scream that will rattle your bones too. And a whine that will get under your skin and make you give in just to shut her up. She's what you call a "high spirited" child. Now, later on in life, it will be a good thing, she will be (hopefully) an independent thinker, not resort to peer pressure, etc. But right now? Yikes....... She's a handful alright. But that's only a small part of her personality. And when she's not like this she's the most charming person in the world! She's got a smile to make you melt. A grin to make you laugh, and she's so intelligent too!

I know my eldest would love to have time here with just her and her friends. And soon my youngest can have friends and playdates over. She does have one friend that I could call her mom to see if they can play together. Maybe we can do that this summer......... Hopefully we can find a better balance where she has to include her sister, but also have time with just her and her friends too.

Kids.............it's a constant work in progress!!!

Ahhhh.....this is going to be a long day.

30 hours of no kids.....

First let me say, I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my girls! They are SOOOO important to me and a main part of my life. But hey, EVERYONE needs a break now and then.

Friday I went up to Burbank to see my sister and have a garage sale with her, to get rid of the remaining things of my mom's that none of us wanted. I was so torn going up there. On the one hand, I was looking forward to being without children for a while, but on the other hand, I did NOT want to do this garage sale. It's almost like one of the final steps of saying goodbye to my mom. Plus we have done so much work trying to get through probate and such, and we are just tired of it all. We want it to be done.

Once I got on the road though, I was fine. It didn't matter that I was stuck in MAJOR traffic, I had the music blaring, and I didn't have to turn it down to listen to what my children wanted to say to me. I was free for a while! :)

Once I got up there, my sister and I had the daunting task of going through each room and clearing it out (we had gone through so much beforehand, thank goodness, so it wasn't THAT much, but it was enough). We both confessed to each other that we did NOT want to do this garage sale, but we knew it had to be done. My father-in-law came over too, to help out and my sister's boyfriend was there too to help us get the big things out. My cousin came down from Vegas too, to see the house one last time. She was able to go through things and take things she wanted, which was good.

We got pretty much everything priced, said goodbye until the next day.

Fast forward to the next morning. The garage sale started at 8 a.m., but we got there at 7:00 a.m., to start putting things out. Of course there were people already waiting to check things out, but they had to wait until we got everything else out of the house.

I must say, that even though we were not looking forward to doing this, we did have a good time doing it. We made it enjoyable. We made jokes about things, we talked about things that were mom's to people who bought them. There was a picture of a tree at sunset that a lady bought and when I told her it was one of my mom's favorite's, she asked me what mom's name was and said that she owns a theatre on Magnolia and that she was going to name the picture "Janet's Tree" and that anyone who walked in there, would see the sign. That made me and my sister get choked up with emotion that was so sweet! Then there was another picture a friend of my mom's had drawn for her. It was a picture of four animated girls in a bathtub that said,

There's too many kids in the tub
There's too many elbows to scrub
I just washed the behind
Of one that's not mine
There's too many kids in the tub.

I told the person about the story behind it, how the four girls in the tub represented me, my two sisters and my baby cousin (whom my mom watched for my aunt at nights, since my aunt worked nights at the post office)

It was SO nice being able to tell people the stories behind the things that people bought! Some people asked about the house, if we were selling it too, and so I was able to tell the story about the house too. About how my grandma bought it in 1950 with my grandpa John. After my Grandpa John passed away in 1957, the house was paid off, thanks to the good sense they had to buy mortgage insurance in case something happened to one of them. I told them how it has been in our family for 56 years, how my grandparents paid $40,000 for it, and so on.

So while I didn't want to go up there at first, I am SO glad I did. It was nice to be able to tell stories about my grandparents, and my mom and be able to smile about the things I was saying. I do hope that the people who were listening knew that everything I said was coming from the heart.

Oh, we did have one :::::::::::::::shudder::::::::::::::::: moment! There was a TV stand we were selling (and by the way it never ended up getting sold) and one of the shelves was flipped down at an angle. Well, this one woman was looking at it and she went to flip up the shelf and screamed and dropped it again. I saw it happen and I was curious as to why she did that, because she didn't say what she saw. So I flipped it up and inside ::::::::::::::::shudder::::::::::::::::::, was a LIVE......LIVING........... NOSE TWITCHING.........BEADY-EYED MOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!

Yea, you can better believe that I screamed too!!!! I was in the driveway in the back and my sister was up in the front yard of the house and SHE heard me scream! I went walking very fast up to the front of the house yelling, "JOOOOOOSSSSSSHHHHH!!!!!!!" No way was I lifting that thing back up to let it out!!!! But my Father-In-Law, bless his soul, lifted the shelf up and let the little critter go. :::::::::::::::::::::::Shudder::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: YUCK!!!!

Oh, and there were these people who were looking at a OUIJA board game that my other sister had and for some reason we never got rid of it. I joked with them, that we'd pay them $.50 to take it instead of them paying us to have it. I joked that we keep trying to get rid of it, but it just keeps coming back! We've had five people buy it, but somehow it keeps coming back (ALL joking of course, it just never got tossed) My mom was not a COMPLETE packrat, but it did take her a LONG time to get rid of things.

I'll tell you one thing though, it sure makes me want to go through all my stuff and purge even more! I have to keep reminding myself to do that every year, even when I get old. I don't want to have to have my children go through all the stuff that we had to go through.

Of course the ride home was horrendous though. It took me FOUR HOURS to get home, when it normally takes TWO! It took me TWO hours to go SIXTY miles. EEEK!!! That's how bad the freeways were on the way home.

I did come home with a few things though. The high chair that had been in my family since my Uncle Dan, 64 years ago. Every child and grandchild has sat in that chair and I couldn't let it leave the family. Hubby's parents gave us their china cabinet, some magnets that were on my mom's refrigerator and some papers.

So even though I didn't want to go, I did, and I'm glad I did. It was a VERY nice break from my children.