Please do not adjust your monitor...what you are seeing is real.

Yes, this is a new post. Let me give you a moment to catch your breath....better? Okay. I must warn you that this is a long one. We have a lot of catching up to do! Ready, let's just jump right in then...

We're going to skip February...I don't think anybody wants to hear why I refuse to celebrate Valentine's Day.

In March we went camping with Joe's brother Al, his wife Ashley, and their two kids, Will and Logan. This was not my favorite camping trip ever. It was kind of (okay, really) last minute. I had to work late, so I was the last one to get to the campground, which I had never been to before, so I got lost trying to find it...in the dark. By the time I got there the gate was closed, so I had to leave my van parked on the side of the road outside the gate and have Joe drive up to get me. I was sure that my van (or at least it's tires) would be gone by morning, luckily it wasn't. Dinner was good (isn't food always better when you're camping?), the weather was good (albeit a bit chilly - 30 degrees), and the kids were good. Until it was time to get ready for bed. Everytime I tried to take Afton to the bathhouse to use the bathroom she screamed as if I had suggested we chop off her left leg. Needless to say, she didn't use the potty before bed. So at approximately 1am she woke up, sort of. And started crying. And then screaming. Violently. We knew we were in the midst of a full blown night terror, she's had them before, but we had never had to deal with them in the middle of a tent in 30 degree weather. We knew that it was most likely caused by her needing to use the bathroom, so I picked her up and headed towards the bathhouse. She started screaming that she wanted to go home, so I turned around and we threw her ~ okay, we didn't throw her ~ we placed her ever so gently in the truck and headed toward the van. At which time she promptly urinated all over her daddy. This woke her up completely and she stopped screaming. And started crying. She didn't want to go home, she wanted to go camping with her friends. So we turned the truck around, drove back to the tent, changed her wet clothes, crawled back into bed and slept for about another 4 hours. We woke up at about 6am the next morning, ate breakfast, packed our stuff and went the heck home, vowing never to go camping again. What follows are the 4 pictures I have of a happier, drier, less tired Afton:

Afton and Will making Gravel Angels as opposed to Snow Angels?

Daddy made ribs...they were yummy!

Afton helping make the "pumper bed" (air mattress).

I think the headlamp is all the rage in Europe right now.

Later in March, something happened that had never happened before - and we were THRILLED to see it! Afton got 3 smiley faces during school, AND she was chosen to be the line leader! (I actually do have pictures of her standing next to the chart for her class with her 3 smiley faces on it, but it's on my phone and I have yet to figure out how to get them on the computer.) The smiley faces are a really big deal for their class. If you get 3 smiley faces in one day you get to pick something out of the Treasure Box before you go home. This box is a 3 year old's dream come true ~ Smarties, Lollipops, Whistles, Yo-Yos, Bubble Gum...all the good stuff. I was substituting in the room next door the day it happened and I could hear her teacher (the uber-patient Miss Candy) cheering for her when she got her first one, and then she got her second and Candy let her come over to tell me; she gave me a great big hug and was so excited. But when she got that third smiley face, man - you would have thought Miss Candy had given her the moon! Other kids in her class were cheering for her and she raced over to my room to tell me, I started crying (yes, because I'm that kind of dork). It was the most wonderful moment for her!! And then when Candy picked her to be the line leader at the end of the day she said Afton looked at her and said "Who? Me?!" She was incredibly proud of herself, and so are we! Afton is not a mean kid by any stretch of the imagination, and she isn't one of those kids that's sneaky and mischevious, constantly misbehaving when your back is turned (you know the kind of kid I'm talking about); but she is hard-headed, and getting her to do anything she doesn't want to do is like moving a mountain. So the smiley faces have been difficult for her because she doesn't want to clean up and she doesn't want to color pictures. But she's also a very, very smart kid ~ and if you put a challenge in front of her she will rise to the occassion, and she did. Candy says that sometimes she has to work with Afton differently. Other kids get smiley faces for coloring in the lines; although Afton could do that blind-folded, she gets bored with coloring so she may not get a smiley face for that particular assignment, but she'll get one for matching rhyming words or something more challenging than coloring. We are very lucky that Afton has a teacher that will put forth the extra effort to encourage Afton to do her best. Here's to more smiley faces and good days!!


So, now it's April. Warmer weather, more fun outside...on one of the first warmer days we had this year Afton and I went out and bought her a slip and slide. Now, I know they say for kids ages 5 and up, but tell me she doesn't look like she's having the time of her life...

April also brought the opportunity for us to take a mini-vacation as a family. We decided to take this weekend and go to Asheboro, NC and go camping for a couple nights and take Afton to the zoo. I didn't realize how little she understood about zoos until I asked her what she wanted to see when we got there. Her answer? Ants. My child ~ my smart, loving, beautiful, precocious child wanted to go to the zoo because she thought she could see ants. When I told her they had elephants, and polar bears she laughed at me. Well...needless to say when we got there she was so excited! More about the zoo in a minute. We camped at a place called Trails End Family Campground. It is literally one minute's drive from the Africa entrance to the zoo. Joe said he could hear the big cats grunting and "roaring" at night - I wouldn't know, I was dead tired! But the owners say that they've heard it before too. Creepy. Afton has found that she loves to camp. She got her very first fishing pole this weekend, of course it has Dora on it - she used it even when we weren't near the water. She loves to fish, to cook in the fire (she kept asking Joe to "turn on the fire"), and of course she loves to run and get dirty. We really enjoyed camping this weekend...a lot more than the last time we went! There were no night terrors, no screaming about the potty, we were all on our best behavior! And the weather was almost perfect - about 60 at night (that's the perfect part) and 90 during the day...a touch warm, but not too bad. The Asheboro Zoo is a huge zoo. We split it into two days. We drove up to Asheboro on Friday, camped Friday night, some good friends of ours (Ashley, Troy and Jordan) drove up on Saturday and went to the zoo with us. We toured the African side of the zoo, and it took us the better part of 3 to 4 hours. By the time we reached North America we were beat! So we only went to the Polar Bear exhibit and called it a day. Ashley and her family had to leave after that, but we had decided to camp one more night, so we went back to the zoo to finish the North America side today. This second trip to the zoo was made possible because Joe had a brilliant idea about a week ago. He found a coupon for a Family Membership to the American Zoological Society, we paid $49 for a one year membership and it allows us to get into 150 zoos and aquariums across the country either free or 1/2 price, and the Asheboro Zoo is on the free list! Considering that it would have cost us $30 dollars to get in for one day, this membership has already paid for itself! Rest assured that you will be seeing a lot more aquarium/zoo posts and photos in the future!

Going fishing with daddy.

This was just before she fell in.

Riding the elephant at the zoo.


The Carousel ~ it appears she has a fondness for giraffes. First on the carousel, and then she picked a giraffe snowglobe at the gift shop.

I can't help it...I love this guy!

And now, for the final installment...Mr. Caterpillar. That's what we named him. Afton found this little guy in our backyard today, crawling across our patio. He's lucky that Wookie didn't find him first! She let him crawl on her finger for a minute or two, and when I suggested that we might want to put him back in the garden she asked why. I said he might be scared because she's so much bigger than he is and she said to him "It's okay little guy. I'm your friend." I finally did convince her to put him in the garden so he could find some leaves to eat. She told him she would see him later. It really was very sweet.