The family that camps together...

Boys By Fire
Originally uploaded by SnLGienapp.

...smells together. Lovely sentiment, I know. You just don't realize how much you smell like wood smoke until you're done camping, or in a sterile enviroment such as an emergency room. As it happened, we were standing in the Crossville, TN Emergency room, waiting for my youngest son's (bloodwork, EKG, x-ray, gamma-ray, urine sample, aptitude test, psychological tests) results back when Laurie says to me, "Gee-Whiz, we smell like campfire". Obviously I use prosaic license, Laurie would never ever say Gee Whiz, but you get the idea. One of the reasons that we smelled like campfire was because we had just awaken from two nights of camping, when our 18 month old gently alerted us to the fact that he didn't feel terribly well, and could we go home now please. Thus at 7 am last Saturday we found ourselves in a strange ER. The fact that it felt like a strange ER to us was because it was in fact we were not in the town we live in normally, and because we've become fairly well acquainted with our "regular" ER. In fact, that 's what we call it.... "Hey Laur, do you want to go to the regular ER or do you want to try to find a new one this time?".
We hadn't PLANNED on going to a strange ER and ending our camping trip a day early, but (check it and see )Nick caught a fever of a 103, thus fulfilling the "Hot-Blooded" Foreigner fantasy that we all have from time to time. Nick spent most of very early Saturday AM keeping Mommy and I posted on his condition, which to hear him tell it was intolerable. These health updates came every 15 minutes, in the form of crying, and when that didn't work he would throw his elephant at our heads, and when that didn't work he would just vomit.
So at 7am, when the night was officially over, we woke up big brother who had slept like a log the entire night, (grrrrrrrrr) and drove to the ER.

My wife and I came together with a common love of camping and fishing, and it's something we always enjoyed doing together. We hope to instill the same love of the outdoors in our sons, who other than going to the ER totally enjoyed camping, with all the accompanying snack foods.

nope.. can't improve on this..

D. & Daddy Fishing
Originally uploaded by SnLGienapp.

Those of you who really know me know that I'm not one for rank sentamentalism, but there is something about this picture that is dreamlike and chock full of emotion for me. I suppose most Dad's have this feeling at this moment, and I'm sure that my Dad did as well, even if we never caught any fish that day. This picture speaks volumes to me, and reminds me that when things in my life seem out of control, I've still been very blessed...