Our Little Corner: March 2010

I used to hate when my teacher gave us that writing assignment. My mind would go blank and I wouldn't know where to start. Besides, I never did anything exciting over Spring Break or Summer Vacation. I ended up making a sort of list: I climbed trees, did chores, pulled weeds, helped with the canning and freezing of produce, read books (I could actually put that in several times since that was the activity of choice from about second grade on) and played games with one or another or multiples of my siblings.

My objection to the writing assignment wasn't because I had nothing to write about but because it sounded boring next to my classmates going to Lake Tahoe or Disneyland or Hawaii or Mexico. I also had no idea where to start or what to include. It helped a little when the teacher told us to write about our most exciting adventure.

My most exciting adventure for Spring Break 2010 took up nearly the entire week. Four adults and I took 14 Girl Scouts aged 11 - 14 to Disneyland for three days. There were two younger sibling tag-alongs but they stayed glued to their parent's side and I wasn't responsible for them in any way.

The story opens at 3 am Monday morning in the local library parking lot where we met for the drive down. Most of the girls had stayed up all night with the encouragement of their parents in the hopes that they'd spend a good deal of the drive sleeping. Richelle had never had me order her to stay up so that was quite a novel experience for her. One of the girls spent the night with us so they could help each other stay awake. They managed it but when I got up at 1:50am, Richelle greeted me with, "I'm tired and want to go to sleep!"

I had three girls with me in our truck and do you think they dropped off to sleep in an hour or so? Hollow laugh. Those gluttons stayed awake until just south of Redding - about five hours down the road. Absolute excitement kept them awake and silly.

Sixteen hours after leaving the parking lot, we arrived at the motel. We can probably skip the part where we had to get off the freeway for a pit stop just as we came into Los Angeles...and promptly got separated from our lead car. Nothing deliberate, just traffic. We can also gloss over my merge into a city street while trying to get back on the freeway. And the sheer terror of finally merging onto the freeway and having a two-trailered belly-dump semi six inches from my mirror. He had his lane and I had mine but I thought mine was going to end and I didn't see anything but semi to my left. I'd swear they make the lanes on the freeways down there the width of a semi plus six inches. It was enough to make a person's hair stand on end and get an otherwise dedicated atheist to fervently pray. I had one of our SUVs seemingly attached to my bumper with an invisible bungee cord and played tag with the other for about ten miles before we got re-connected. I love cell phones and people on the same provider as I am. We met up with the lead car....at the motel. They had the group checked in so all we had to do was unload and park.

We had ordered "Class B" shirts (informal uniforms) in time for this trip. At one of the pre-event meetings, we asked the girls what rules they'd like to set down. The first suggestion was "no drama" and was quickly seconded so we had "No Drama" printed on the left sleeve of the Class B. Any time any of the girls started getting dramatic, someone would point to the sleeve or say, "No drama!" It usually worked.

more later.....(the Lovely Daughter is doing this for the Dearest Mother. hee hee. and i will add that the girl that thought of the "no drama" was the most dramatic girl.)

Our Little Corner

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

What I Did For Spring Break

Family Additions