The Weekend That Was -- Part 2

Saturday morning we had a lovely breakfast of pancakes and bacon. As we were cleaning up one of those dear park rangers strolled through our area. Hubs saw him coming down the hill and requested everyone act normal. We obviously didn't want to draw anymore attention to ourselves than we already had.

After breakfast was cleaned up we headed out for a little fishing. It was a little slow at first and as usual I got my line all tangled up. I'm a trooper though, I was determined to fix it myself (yes, some people refer to this as stubborn), and I did! As a matter of fact I tied all of my own hooks and baited them myself for the rest of the day!! (Okay, if you know me at all, you know there was an ulterior motive to this. I'm trying to show Hubs that if he doesn't take me fishing more often I'll just go by myself.)

We changed locations to have more room for the kids to fish. I am happy to report I caught the first fish of the day! Well sort of ... When Hubs saw I had a fish on he came over to help. He grabbed the net and brought the fish in. I'm not gonna lie, it wasn't the biggest fish I saw on a stringer that day, but I had done pretty well. The kids were super excited and ran over to see. In amongst the brouhaha the fish broke the line and landed on the bank. Being a smart fish it flopped and flopped it's way back into the water and swam away. Me being the smart woman I am and knowing there were A LOT of people around decided not to flail myself at the flopping fish on the bank and end up in the water with it. I was very proud of that split second decision.

Before two long the kids were tired of fishing and we were tired of the kids. We packed up and went to tear down our campsite. As we put everything away we discussed our next camping trip without kids!

After arriving back home we nestled in for a short nap. After reviving ourselves I put a call into my sister who along with her finance were working on flipping a house. They had a lot to do in a short amount of time. My parents were there helping and well, I felt sorry for them so we loaded up and went to help. I spent the evening scrub-brushing floor boards with bleach water so the laminate could be laid next weekend. Eventually we called it a night and went back home.

On Sunday morning we played hooky from church. I went back to help my sister paint the house. I left after about two hours dealing with that pesky migraine. I drove straight home and laid down.

You've heard there is no rest for the weary. Well I think that applied over the weekend. Within what seemed like minutes it was time to go to our small group. Normally we host small group at our house, but on Sunday another family had volunteered to host a bonfire at their place. Needless to say these folks have a perfect place for this type of event. Several acres outside of town, filled with all types of varmints for hunting, plenty of place for the kiddos to explore, and so on.

I'll just tell you that the "bon" really didn't have any "fire"! I don't know what was wrong with their wood, but I'm telling you it would not burn!! I must say I saved the day. I remembered that we had a starter log left from camping in our vehicle. So, we roasted marshmallows over a starter log!

At the end of the evening I started to help clean up. We were gathering the food to take it inside. Mr. Host asked to hand him a paper plate from the other end of the table. There were probably 6 or 7 plates stacked together, laying upside down. These were the nice heavy "Chinet" plates, so you couldn't just grab one off the top. It had to pick up the whole stack and pry one off. No big deal. Standing directly over the plates and trying to hurry, I quickly picked up the stack of plates. When I saw what was underneath I screamed so loud I'm sure people in the next county could hear me! The plates flew across the yard and I jumped, ran, flew, or whatever just about as far away as they landed. Of course, all of our small group members were trying to figure out what all the commotion was for. It was then they stepped over to see the RATTLESNAKE I had found coiled up under the stack of plates!

I couldn't have told you how I would have reacted to that situation, but now I can tell to that there was a little pee that ran down my leg! Keep in mind that all of this happened really fast, so it was within less than minute that everyone (including me) found out it was a real rattlesnake, it was just frozen solid and put there as a joke on me.

Please pray for the rednecks in my small group!