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Since the term “vacation” is always dubious when one is in the car with three small children our family goes on “Adventure.” Well this year on our “Adventure” we visited good friends whom we have not seen in years. Watched our youngest toddle through their driveway roaring at the top of his lungs as their children and ours (6 who could walk) ran screaming from his roaring with shouts of “Monster, monster, aaaaahhhhh!” There are times that I agree with them. Cough cough.

Then after a quick visit with Grandma Judy we took to the car, visited by best friend at “Old MacDonalds” and set up our lovely 10 man tent at Seaquest State Park. Our site was glorious with tons of Moss and twisty Dr. Suess trees and a picnic table and fire pit. But moss does not grow without moisture and so just as we returned from purchasing pizza the raindrops began to splatter. We shuffled our young brood into the tent after a brief respite in which we roasted an apple and jiffy pop over the fire. There was much fussing and crying and of course snuggling into Momma and Daddy’s bed but eventually they fell asleep and the rains rushed upon our thin shelter bombarding it the entire night. But I was proud of our tent. It stayed dry! Not a single river of water wending its way through our suitcases and sleeping bags. This was remarkable after my many soggy experiences camping in youth group.

The next day we visited a Mt. St. Helen’s observatory while our tent dried. Sweet Boy #3 was running across the flagstones to the hunky hubby and fell smack face down getting a large bruise, and I failed to have brought baby wipes and found out that being environmentally responsible the observatory did not have a single paper towel on the premises. Have you ever tried to change a poopy diaper with wet tp? Give it a try and get back to me.

We returned just as it began to rain on our dry tent and spent 2 hours and 15 minutes packing everything up. Then off to Mt. St. Helens to the Jonston Ridge Observatory for a scary volcano movie and a view of the crater. It was glorious and educational and cold and took a long long time. Sweet boy #1 especially enjoyed it and is still spouting stuff off about the earthquake and landslide on the north slope of the mountain that caused the large eruption.

Then, off into the night we drove. Our destiny, the cousins house. After all 3 cried the last 30 min. in the car, we arrived and went to bed and woke up Saturday morning to the glorious sight of the cousins! They played, they fought, they tore up the garden, they frolicked on the beach and conquered “Old MacDonald’s.” A glorious time that ended much too soon. My brother and the hunky hubby got to take in the newest zombie movie. Yuck! While the next day my sister and I went out for cake and coffee and sat on the beach drinking our caffeine and eating our cake without forks. Hey, the woman asked if we wanted forks…and then did not put them in the bag. Revenge I think for pressing our noses against the glass and pointing out that closing time had not actually come even though they’d locked the door. But we got our cake, if not our forks, and it was delicious and wonderful to get out.

With leaden hearts we bid the cousins good-by, ran around on the beach a bit before departure and then took the (supposedly) 6 hour drive home. It took 8.5 and all three boys had diarrhea, one boy vomited on himself, and one boy blazed through 3 separate pairs of undies in various diarrhea related incidents. Finally we crawled into our beds, me with a headache and alarmingly sore throat. Our adventure was complete.