Spring break has come and gone. Now it's back to the not-so-real world of public education. I could provide a breakdown of almost all that my family and I did over spring break. It would include these things:

• stay the night with my mom
• attend my cousin's wedding
• camp out for one night
• fishing
• hiking
• reading
• resting
• writing
• date in Lawrence
• hair cut
• soccer practice
• writers' group
• yard clean up

That's the abbreviated version. For those of you who only want the "quick and pointed", there it is and you may now feel free to skip on out of here without reading any more. Don't feel guilty, I'll wait on you to leave . . .



 Still here? I can only conclude then that you are either a glutton for the form of punishment that is reading these horrid diary entries; or, you have found that you must "clean your plate" literarily speaking, and finish reading each and every word to the bitter end, once you have started, for good or bad. The last scenario is not plausible enough to entertain, and just barely made the final cut of possibilities, and that is this: you actually like to read my writing. However much I'd love to consider this as a viable option concerning my writing, I find it difficult to believe. I just can't imagine anyone reading this willingly who had no relationship with me. However, this is the blog about my family, which my readers realize when they get into it from the get go. So here goes.

My "little" cousin was married to a wonderful gal on Saturday March 17. I'm happy for the both of them. I don't know her real well, but she's made a positive first (and succeeding) impression upon me. He, the groom, is just a great guy who's learned some lessons the hard way and I can't say enough good things about him and her and her two daughters. They make a great family and I'm excited to see them go through life together. They are somewhat like Mare and I in that they just keep things real and are not into posturing for others' benefit. Whatever that means.

I was wonderfully privileged to be asked to perform some songs on my guitar during the seating portion before the wedding, and to play the opening melody of Nothing Else Matters by Metallica for her walk down the aisle. Learning that song was a challenge, and in the end I did not perform it perfectly, but well enough for a group of people I mostly knew who paid no attention to it anyway because they were all focused upon the bride to be walking down the aisle. They treated us to a great barbecue dinner after the wedding, so that was an added bonus heaped upon the other good things about the union.

Because the wedding rehearsal was on Friday night, I buzzed down to Humboldt with the two oldest boys in tow and we all three stayed the night with my mom. She was alone for the evening as dad was away. Mom and her two grandsons had fun walking to the golf course pond and all the ensuing hi jinx that goes along with it. My sister arrived late, late, that night from Oklahoma. We rose early on Saturday for breakfast together, and I drove myself and the oldest boy back to O-town for his soccer practice for an hour. He helped wash the car and Mare got her hair trimmed and we loaded up all of us to go back to Humboldt for the wedding. Sis left back for Oklahoma about an hour after the wedding and we drove back to O-town not long after.

Sunday I spent the morning finding and packing things to take the two oldest camping. We finally arrived around 1:00 at our usual haunt for camping in Kansas: Woodridge Campground at Clinton Lake. We immediately hiked down the trail about a mile or more to the lake shore where we tried fishing. Daddy couldn't secure any bait for the fish, so we were forced to try Whales crackers, the knockoff brand of Goldfish crackers. It's all I had and besides it was so oppressively windy, the fish didn't bite (the wind? the bait?) and we only tried it for about 40 minutes. They thought it was cool nonetheless.

We hiked back and the boys played while I set up the tent and scoured the empty campground (Sunday night, remember?) for firewood left behind at other camp spots. I gathered a bunch after a bunch of trips, and lit it just before sundown. Up until then I had kept the boys out of the tent, but since they'd eaten all they wished to eat at the picnic table, I let them in to change into jammies and to read bed time stories. I lit and hung the candle lantern in the tent and got back out to sit by the fire and do some writing. I kept my ear on the weather radio as it was kind of windy up in the campground among the trees, too, and the sun had not shown its face yet and rain was in the air, but unexpected until Monday afternoon.  We had the campground to ourselves, though there were some vehicles parked there and their occupants loaded up backpacks to hike down the trail a ways to camp in the woods.

I packed up as soon as we got around in the morning to have everything in the car in case it rained. We were able to enjoy another big fire in the morning with the leftover fire wood from the night before. So, we sat around it for awhile until it did start to sprinkle and rain. At that point we donned our rain gear and set off for our second hike. We started down the opposite trailhead. We walked a long way and then made our way back after a couple hours of hiking. We dove in the car and made our way home where it was warm and dry.

Stay tuned for the next installment of Life in la-la land, or, Spring Break 2012!