a picture perfect day with no pictures...

No, my fully charged new batteries disapeared from my camera without a trace. No one here knows anything about it. Hmm. Aaron had his camera, but he is gone to a meeting tonight, so no pics right now......instead, I will try to describe the day.....I had the bright idea to take the kids to a nice county park on one of the Finger Lakes....(five finger lakes in central NY state, formed by glaciers, deep and clean and pretty........long and narrow like fingers, parallel to each other....) Mirielle, Mali, and Margaret had places to go with their friends, so I took Aaron, Sam, Kathryn, Evelyn, Suzanne, Sonja K., Jon, Charlotte Claire, and Camille. The playground was our first stop, with the snacks set out....candy bars, diet soda, cheese crackers, almonds. And cheese and crackers and pepperoni. Yeah, I know, very healthy. We are clean out of fresh fruit and veggies. There is a huge slide there, they all went to the top and formed a train and went down together...it was nice to see Aaron, 16, and Sam, 14, playing so nicely with the younger ones. They took Camille down it several times. ( I asked her about it tonight, and she said, "steps!") They all went on the old-fashioned merry-go-round, Aaron made it go really fast. After a while we packed up the snacks, and headed down to the beach. I was worn out in like ten minutes. Camille thought she had a swim floatie on, I think. She has no sense. She just would run out in the water and collapse. I had to pull her up....and she just laughed....she finally settled down a bit, and played with the sand in the shallow water....the other kids would be jumping in and yelling, WATCH THIS, MOMMY!, and I would be like, sure, like I can take my eyes off Camille for more than two seconds. It seemed like everytime I did, she went under water. I don't mean to make it sound like she was in danger, she seems to hold her breath when she goes under, she doesn't cough or take in water......she just keeps me on my toes. There was a life guard on duty, and less than ten other people swimming. After about 45 minutes or so, I had had enough, so I scooped her up, carried her up to the grassy area, and cuddled her in her towel while she drank a bottle of milk. (What? She's getting too old for this?) We packed up and headed to the van. Boy, reading this makes it sound easy. I am omitting all the fun. Like how I almost left without Suzanne because she didn't want to sit next to Sonja, and she went back in the house and I didn't know it. Or how I "ran" into Walmart on the way there, with only Evelyn, to get them a volleyball to play with at the park, and several of the kids protested that I didn't bring them in. Or how Camille peed through her swimdiaper all over Sam. Or how on the way home, they somehow talked me into taking them through the drive-through of McDonalds....they got a paper and pen and took orders, two things each...we still came out short one hot fudge sundae, so I made Sam give his to Jon.....Sam made out well, because I gave him the rest of my double cheesburger, which only had a few bites out of it, then Jon gave the sundae back to Sam....anyway, they supposedly brought all of the garbage out of the van.....and when we got home, we did not have to have dinner! We just went swimming! Yay for a break! The weather today was superb. Warm and sunny and breezy and not too hot and not too cool and the water was warm and clear and sandy-bottomed. And Camille in her new brown and pink polka-dotted bikini with the ruffled bottoms, way too cute.....

The younger ones are tucked in, Benjamin is watching the Yankees. Mirielle is packing, she is leaving soon, but I am not allowed to say when, because she does not want her friends to throw her a going away party....so I am being respectful of that, even though I don't agree. Kathryn, Evelyn, and Suzanne are still up....summer hours. The older kids are all at a meeting with Paul.

Well, these three girls want to talk...