"Smashing" says it all!

Well, I am back once again. Girls' week was smashing, the youth convention was superb, and vacation was fantastic. What more need I say?

You know me well enough to realize that I am about to say more.

Announcement number one: to whom it may interest, I have successfully completed AND passed drivers' education!!! No license yet but the bulk of the work is behind me and HISTORY! I actually had to take the final test the day that girls' week started. Not only that, but my final class was right before the van was leaving so I had to leave my class early and get shuttled down to Jaffrey to meet our ride. Thankfully the rendezvous went smoothly.

Hmm, next I would like to say for the record (and for all those who haven't heard me say it already) that this girls' week was my first sick-free girls' week EVER!!! True, it was only my third one, but being sick for two girls' weeks in a row is not to be taken lightly, and therefore I don't take my healthy week of fun for granted. Obviously Someone was looking out for me. Not that God wasn't looking out for me in past years. In fact, I learned a valuable lesson last girls' week on just accepting sickness when God allows it. It's a very content feeling, and it certainly helps dispel fear in the "oh no am I going to get sick?" category. Nonetheless, I am extremely thankful that I was spared a day or two of misery.

So, what did we do? Um, went to Newport, saw the Coronet, and oh yes, shopped. The next day we went strawberry picking and rode a hayless hay ride, and the day after that we toured Blithewold Mansion and got to explore its humongous garden by the bay. Then before ending up at Fairwood, oh yeah, we shopped again at the outlet malls. And that, with the exception of the myriad of scintillating conversations, breathtaking games, and uplifting meetings, sums up the week. The End.

And of course the youth convention went swimmingly. I wish I could say that I felt like describing it for you, but since the majority of my readers know what a youth convention is typically like, I won't force myself. However I must say that along with the good meetings and sports (and meals and people and everything else), Craig did a very good job of coming up with creative games. One afternoon we were divided up into teams and we competed in field day activities as a team (for instance every team member's time for the fifty-yard dash was averaged with everyone else's, the long jumps were all added together, and so forth). Another time we played the regular skit-in-a-bag game, where everyone did a splendid job in coming up with hilarious ideas. Over all a fun convention.

On to vacation. Last Wednesday morning we picked Kendra up at the Hartford airport and our whole family just chilled around, exploring corners of Massachusetts we'd never seen before, having a picnic lunch, and then wandering around in the Holyoke mall which was closing early for the 4th. But we still got some last remnants from a closing Chinese place in the food court. I think they were happy to bestow their leftovers upon us! I was the last person in our family to get my food I think, and the Oriental lady absolutely heaped my plate, chuckling, "You eat a lot tonight!" And I did, but not without a little help.

Thursday was Six Flags and I got to go to my first water park ever! I had loads of fun trying those out, sloshing round dark corners in a tube with my siblings, going through waterfalls at odd intervals, and speeding down twisting slides that go faster and faster as you go. I even tried out a slide that was several stories high and practically just drops you at a sixty-five degree angle or so. I wasn't ready to go on the Superman roller coaster though. Somehow going 77 mph and being dropped two hundred some feet just isn't quite my cup of tea.

On Friday my whole family minus Chad sailed on up (in our mini van) to Quebec City where we spent a relaxing weekend camping. Yes, camping! And we love it! Or at least those of us who went do. No wimps in our family. . . . except all those people who slept on air mattresses, for Pete's sake. I mean, if you're going to go camping it's no fun unless you feel a couple of rocks sticking into your back, right? I can understand if you're a lady in your upper fifties who has to deal with arthritis, but if you're just a twenty-one-year-old guy? Come on! Where's the adventure? Nonetheless, since we had the air mattresses, we used them, though Daddy and I were the only people who didn't wimp out. Oddly enough, Craig's air mattress proved to be the one that never leaked and he was the one who ended up with back problems on the trip. Poor kid.

So we explored Quebec City in all its quaint Frenchness, admired St. Ann's Cathedral, visited Krispy Kreme (of course), explored Canadian countryside with beautiful red-roofed barns (which of course we stopped to take pictures of), swam in the campground pool, played croquet, read Jeeves and Calvin and Hobbes, and hid our books from Kendra who kept on trying to steal ours because she didn't bring enough reading material. All in all, we had a lovely vacation. There's some sort of charm in having a vacation where you wash your face from a spigot, spit your tooth paste into the woods, pay a quarter for a hasty shower, and eat three s'mores each night before bedtime, is there not? The last morning we intended to break camp and touch on Montreal on our way home, so we woke with the rooster. I'm serious, we all really did wake up to the call of the rooster outside our tent at seven o'clock sharp! Never mind that the rooster's voice sounded suspiciously like my mom's. . . .