Hiking at Conagree National Park

I joined the local Hiking group and went with them to Conagree National Park last Saturday. I was so excited....got new shoes, a new waistpack to carry water and snacks and off I went. The path started out with a high boardwalk leading to the dirt trail. Well it was wet and covered with leaves.....so needless to say I found a way to slip and take a pretty hard fall. To my credit I shook it off and kept going. There were several other times when I tried to slip...mostly on the various wooden bridges. Emilia went along and had a blast, she bonded with Kathi a nice lady that carpooled with us up to the location. She became Emilia's new buddy and Emilia hiked most of the time with her. Kathi was so funny talking and singing with Emilia, spining around on the trail to the song. A few times Emilia would exclaim that she was "so tired" and squat on the side of the trail only to jump up and race to the front after a few people passed her. There was a total of 13 people there. One guy brought his new puppy - which everyone had fun playing with. Afterwards a bunch of us went out to eat afterwards. It was a great time with a great bunch.

Appalachian Trail

I have a desire to backpack the Appalachian Trail. (For those of you who don't know what it is...it is a 2,170 +/- hiking trail that extends from Ga to Maine) Now I realize that this is a VERY ambitious desire/thought. But it is not like I plan on leaving home tomorrow. There are a lot of things that I need to do in preparation for this trip. I know that this will be a 3+ year endeavor.

1. I will need to get into a lot better shape. Some extra padding won't kill me, but the physical exertion of carrying it will be hard. I have started walking daily... and plan on doing dayhikes in the surrounding state parks.
2. I will need to purchase the necessary equipment - I have been pricing around and it is going to cost me $700+ dollars for all the things I will need.
3. I plan on taking smaller overnight trips in the foreseeable future.
4. One of the trips I would like to do in the spring of next year is to hike the Bartram Trail. It is a 37 mile trail in Northern GA. It will take 3-4 days.

I am getting Emilia some backpacking gear and she will go with me on the smaller trips....It will be our special thing. I have found a hiking meet-up group here in Augusta and have joined it. I am hoping to go on some hiking trips with them. They mostly do day trips...but maybe I can meet a few people who would be interested in doing overnighters. I think the biggest problem we will have would be teaching her how to pee in the woods without getting her drawers wet. Ha, ha, ha I hope that she enjoys hiking....I think we will try it before buying her any special equipment.

Any of the long trips I will hope to find a female companion to go on it with and I know that it is not exactly ideal to go out in the woods alone, but we will see.

Camping

I love to camp. I had so much fun doing it when I was younger. I bought a tent 3-4 years ago that was supposed to be easy to set up. All the poles are connected and attached to the tent - you just lay it out on the tarp, pull the poles straight and then pull a tension device apart. Well pulling that tension rod apart was impossible, so it has sat in storage until recently. This last weekend was it's first true adventure into to great outdoors. We left Friday night, got to the campgrounds just before dusk. It stopped raining long enough to pitch the tent. Then we went out for dinner, because of the late hour. It rained all night, but we woke up to a clear warm day for Saturday. The sun even got a little too warm and the kids and I retreated into the tent to play games while Steve was running errands. We had origionally taken baby (our dog) with us, but because of our new queen blow up bed there was not alot of room left in the tent. Steve took the dog home and picked up a few needed items....like matches to light the fire/stove. Silly us.
Saturday night we had BLT wedge salad, pork chops, and couscous for dinner. We generally agreed that the couscous would need a whole lot of seasonings should we ever eat it again. Margaret and Jeff came out Saturday night to join us. We had fun taking walks and hanging out with each other. We got the kids put to bed and stayed up for a while chatting.
Sunday morning we woke up and it was windy and cold. We ended up packing up and leaving early because it was so cold. Next time we will be more prepared...so we can stay a little later.
The worst part about camping this last weekend was the lake water was really far down. It was so bad that the yellow floaty things that mark of the swimming area were totally out of the water by several feet. But we want to go camping alot more often - and with time things will improve.

I hate School!

Well that is at least what my darling child Emilia tells me repeatedly. I do find it funny that this comment is mostly made when she has a bad day at school. She had a great Monday and Tuesday with no cards pulled, but on Wednesday she pulled three cards. She has a tiered level of punishment when she pulls cards:

1 card = no desert

1 cards = no dessert, no tv

3 cards = no dessert, no tv and has to stay in her room.

She cried and cried last night having to stay in her room, we talked several times about how "unfair" her punishment was and how "mean" I was being. She told me that she didn't like school and that she just wanted to stay home with me. I think her hyper behavior tends to make her feel excluded from the other children. Hopefully she will learn better way to control her hyperness and be able to overcome. We shall see

Journaling

Yikes - It has been a long time since I have posted...sorry. Alot has been going on it, but to actually be able to sit down and type it all out is a tremendous task.
Since my last post -
Steve's mother Barb past away, he is still trying to come to terms with it, but is taking it one step at a time. So in turn we have taken in her dog into the family. It is a white fluffy dog, unkown breed, male named Baby. So far it has been a welcome addition to the family. It can be a little hyper, but has been very helpful to wake up Emilia in the morning. We just call the dog on top of her bed and he starts to nuzzle her awake...much improved from last year's tourture sessions to get her morning started.
The kids have started school Nicholas (2nd grade) and Emilia (1st grade) each are having there own struggles this year. Nicholas seems to be having trouble learning and Emilia's is a behavior problem - mostly just being too active and hyper...trying to get her to calm down for school.
We went camping this last weekend. It was raining Friday night, was great Saturday and we woke up to a cool, windy Sunday. The lake was way down...so we didn't swim, we went for a couple walks, but mostly just hung out with Margaret, Jeff and Jordan who joined us Saturday afternoon til Sunday a.m.
I was forwarded this email about this woman who has gotten alot of attention from an ebay auction. Her blog address is mom2my6pack.blogspot.com she is hilarious. I wish that she lived closer, because I would love to meet this woman. She has 6 kids and the things they get into are hilarious, and make me appreciate mine. One off her kids she calls Spaz and he reminded me of Emilia so much I almost peed my pants. Well - I got to get back to work. I know that this blog jumped around on different topics, who knows maybe with time I will improve....maybe not.

Year Anniversary

Well, Steve and I made it to our one year anniversary...Yipee!! We went down to Savannah for the day this last Saturday and had fun roaming around River Street. I got to watch them pulling taffy at a candy store, we took a Paddle Riverboad tour and went to the famous cemetary from the movie "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" I was interesting looking at all those beautiful statues. We also went to the cemetary in the middle of downtown Savannah. I saw a plaque commemerating the first Newspaper publisher in GA. Alot of the graves were of people who died in the Yellow fever plauge (I think in the 1870's, not sure) but it was so sad to see all the markers for the children...it had their ages: year, month and date. We ended the day having a seafood dinner at one of the restaurants - very Yummy! Steve and I had a wonderful time looking for gifts for our loved ones.

Emilia had a great time staying at Margaret's house. She came home wearing a bow in her hair, which doesn't happen as often as i like at home. Oh well.....until next time.

Sickness

Man, it has been a while since I have posted. A lot of that time has been dealing with a sick child - Emilia. She was sent home from school on a Tuesday with a fever and was out the rest of that week and the following week with it. We thougth it was just the "flu" thing that was going around and I guess we will never know for sure, because she went to school on a Monday and was sent home with a fever again on Wednesday. Steve took her to the ped. and we found out that she has a UTI, poor thing. This is her fourth one. Tomorrow she is going into the hospital for a test they are going to put some dye into her bladder using a cathedar and see if it is getting into the kidneys. Margaret is coming with us to help keep Emilia calm. I am not sure what will happen if it is -- and it would definatley not be a good thing, but I don't want to get all freaked out, but I am worried.
Nicholas has lost both of his bottom teeth and the permanant ones are coming in somewhat sideways.....he will need braces/orthodontist work. He has been having alot of bad dreams lately, the other night he woke up and said a dragon was chasing him. He also wasn't feeling very well this past week or so, and Margaret mentioned it is affecting his schoolwork. But he was feeling better on Sunday, so hopefully it has past whatever it was.
Steve is doing good working hard and so am I. We are hoping to get a new car soon - but the kind we want (Honda Pilot) is expensive even the used ones. So -- who knows what we will get, probably won't even start seriously looking until summertime.....
bye