3 Mini-Mysteries

Doesn't he look like the foreign spy in a made-for-TV espionage movie?

Mystery #1:

Given all the evidence, one would have to conclude that Daniel's favorite moment of our weekend was the moment he received his plastic disguise glasses from Wendy's. But how can this possibly be? It's a mystery, because Friday afternoon we left the house at 2pm and drove to the beautiful Shenandoah mountains, where we then set up our amazing family tent and cooked burgers and hot dogs on our camp stove. I even brought purple Gatorade especially for Daniel (it's not a party atmosphere for Daniel if all we have to drink is water). We walked on the Appalachian Trail, came back and made S'mores, talked and told stories, stayed up late and slept in our tent. We saw deer and heard owls. In the morning we had pancakes and sausage, broke camp and went on two gorgeous hikes. See? So many incredible moments to choose from.

Okay, I left out a few parts. There were all these irritating gnats buzzing around our faces for much of the time. SO irritating in fact, that I was perfectly willing to pay $9 for a can of bugspray and another $6 in additional bug-be-gone paraphernalia. Our fire was almost impossible to start because the wood was wet. After 45 minutes of failure, we turned to lighter fluid to save the day. The wood lit and burned brightly for about three-and-a-half minutes and then rapidly declined, so we had time for just a few marshmallows before our evening turned from family fireside to family lantern-side. Stephanie cried off and on through the night, and Nathan dragged Eric along on a 3am bathroom break. Our first Saturday hike was great--short, sweet, nice view. Our second hike was probably a mistake. "Downhill to an 83-foot waterfall" sounds terrific, but the waterfall was waaaay over there (can you hear that soft sound, guys? that's the waterfall) and then, of course, we had to hike back UP the trail. If it seemed like a long walk even to us, which it did, it must have really seemed long to the kids. Daniel's most-used phrase was, "I HATE this place!"

So I guess that mystery is pretty much solved after all: I'm trying to look at our campout through rose-colored glasses, but Daniel seems to prefer viewing it through his plastic disguise glasses. You can hardly blame him.

Mystery #2:

I bought a new kind of fruit snacks for the campout, called "Clever Kids." The front of the box says "Number bites! The fun counting snack" and there's a cartoon octopus holding a bunch of numbers and a little calculator. "Feed kids' love of learning." "10 pouches." Okay, there were 13 pouches in there! Now I'm not complaining about the free extras, but you have to admit to some irony here. Teach your kids to count...starting with the 13 pouches in this box of 10. It's a mystery - how did this box end up with so many? Do they all have 13? Did they mean to do that, so that kids would catch the mistake? Now I'm interested to try the alphabet ones.

Mystery #3:

Shortly after returning from our campout Saturday afternoon, Nathan desperately wanted a shower. No wait, that's not the mystery. It probably should be because, come to think of it, he's never wanted a shower before. But back to what I was saying. I forgot to tell him that one of the glass doors on our shower was not actually hooked into the track... CRASH! A million little pieces of glass all over the bathroom. Mysteriously, the little glass pebbles looked blue, even though the shower door was clear. That's not the mystery either, though. Nathan received only a few small cuts on his hands and one larger gash maybe from a metal part of the door. Curious (and a relief!), but also not the real mystery. Here it is: Why did Eric see the need to smash the other shower door in order to dispose of it? Is this the way most men would have handled it? He assured me it had to be done, but I still wonder if he just felt left out of Nathan's experience and invented a reason to recreate it. It must have been like a cool scene from a movie. I wish I had thought to take pictures!