Camping with Friends

“Oh, I have been meaning to tell you,” said CrazyMom as she sat next to me in the RV. “F.G. is missing school on Monday.”

We were packed up and heading out of town to go camping with friends on what we thought was a long weekend for the family. Managing all of the different school schedules got the best of us, however, and we did not realize that F.G. would miss a day of school. Our big-family friends ended up having the same problem for their kids as well. But we did not let a little school ruin a fantastic family outing. Here are some photos of the trip.

bump . . . Bump . . .BIG BUMP!

While I am by no means a packrat, there are a few odd things that I have hung onto over the years. The other day I went up to the attic and pulled down the scooter that I use to ride around campus in my college days. Yes, I did say scooter and I do mean the type that you push with your foot.

The front tire was rotted out, so I called CrazyMom on her cell and had her stop by a bike store to pick up a new tire on her way home from doing errands.

When she got back to the house, I was hunched over the scooter on the garage floor working on it with kids around me. She handed me the tire and said, “bump . . . bump . . . big bump.” I looked up, caught her eye and grinned as we exchanged knowing glances among kids wanting to know what was going on. It was the same phrase that I had been thinking of ever since I pulled the scooter down from the attic and to hear it in her own voice, albeit devoid of the urgency with which it was originally spoken, was delightful.


It was a warm evening back in our college days when I was giving a ride to CrazyMom (I guess it was CrazyGirlfriend at the time) on my scooter. She would stand on the front part of the foot area while I stood on the back and reached around her to hold onto the handlebars. As we were weaving our way through streets and parking lots, we finally came to the sidewalk outside of her apartment building. CrazyMom saw that the pads were uneven ahead creating a bump in the sidewalk.

“bump,” she said in a normal voice to point out to me what was ahead.

Now, us guys are a funny breed. We have a streak in us that produces everything from knights in shining armor to cocky boys full of themselves. This streak kept me on my current course.

“Bump,” CrazyGirlfriend said again a little louder clearly communicating that we were coming upon a dangerous situation.

Little did CrazyGirlfriend know that earlier I had jumped two side-by-side parking curbs with room to spare. This two-inch rise in the pavement paled in comparison to that. I held my course, flexed my knees, and prepared to wow the woman of my dreams.

“BIG BUMP!” came her cry as I pulled up hard on the front handlebars. The front wheel did not clear the bump and CrazyGirlfriend went over the bars and into the pavement only to have me then land on top of her.

This was not the last time that CrazyMom would utter a warning that I would not heed, but over time I have finally come around to listening to them. Now when we are driving in a car and CrazyMom yells, “CrazyD!” I automatically hit the brakes.

Gone Camping

“But in a motor home the kids could play cards as we went down the road,” CrazyMom was saying. All nine of us were packed into the van on a road trip to Grandma and Grandpa F’s house (my folks). CrazyMom and I were reliving the same debate that we had been having for the last five years – she wants a motor home, but I want a travel trailer.

“The last thing we need is another engine to maintain. Plus, they cost a lot more money,” I said as I had said over and over for five years.

Then I looked in the back bench of our twelve passenger van. Miss Bookworm was sitting there reading.

“Hon,” I said in a softer, different tone. “Miss Bookworm is 13. If we talk about this for five more years, then it will all be over. She will be out of the house and we will never have been a camping family. I don’t care if it is a motor home, travel trailer, or a pop up. We need to get something - even if it is the wrong thing - this summer and just start camping.”

CrazyMom agreed and we purposed to find something soon.

The next day we were sitting in the shade in Grandma and Granpa’s yard watching the kids roll by on the go-cart. In my line of sight was their camper sitting in the field where it had been parked for a year or so. I did not think anything of it until the night before we were to leave their place.

“Hey Grandpa F, what are you guys doing with that camper?” I asked. By the next afternoon, after a tow out of the field, a new battery and right front brake calipers, we were on our way, driving the RV.

Here are some shots of our first camping trip that we did at the end of summer. It was a fabulous time together as a family and we are looking forward to our second outing this fall.

First Day of School

We are a multi-school type of family with kids spread all over the place. Each year CrazyMom and I put our heads together to figure out what would be the best option for each of our children. This year Miss Bookworm and Ed will be homeschooled, F.G. will be in a public school, and Buddy, Little Foot, K.D. and Anna will be at the private school where I teach.

We (almost) always snap a few photos as we send them off to school on the first day. It is fun to see these photos over the years to see how the kids change physically, but also to see how excited they are each fall to kick off a new school year.

Anna's "Gift" to Ed

“Mom, I want somebody to sleep with me,” Anna was saying as CrazyMom put her to bed. It is part of the nightly routine for Anna. We tuck her in bed and pray with her being sure to include the phrase “no bad dreams, only good dreams” verbatim. Then she tells us how much she wants somebody to sleep with her and where their bed could go in her room.

But this night Anna got an idea.

“Mom! I know! Tomorrow is Ed’s birthday and I will let her sleep with me!”

Ed was a great sport about her birthday present and spent a night on the floor next to Anna.

Cactus Rolling

As soon as I heard CrazyMom’s scream coming from the bathroom, I knew I had done a very stupid thing. In fact, the scream carried with it certain unique tones that instantly conveyed to me that this was clearly the stupidest thing I had ever done in my life.

It was not until many years later that I learned the name of my folly. It is called cactus rolling. A psychologist that spoke at a training seminar that I was attending told a fictional story about a group that was on tour of a botanical garden. When they were in the desert section, a man from the group suddenly threw himself headlong into the cacti and started immediately yelping in agony. A few minutes later when the medics had him on the gurney and were about to roll him away, another guy from the group asked the question that was on everybody’s mind – “What were you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” replied the man. “It seemed like a good idea at the moment.”

We have all gone cactus rolling before. We have what seems like a good thought, we act on it, and in the briefest of moments we realize that it was a really, really bad idea.

CrazyMom’s scream was the brief moment where I realized my folly. This happened back when we only had Miss Bookworm who was two years old and Ed who was five months old. While CrazyMom’s parents were visiting us, she was beginning to think that the unlikely had happened – that she might be pregnant again. Now we loved children even back then, but it was a little soon for us to be cranking out child number three.

CrazyMom did not want to take a pregnancy test while her parents were there knowing that I always liked for us to have some time before we went public with a pregnancy. After a few days the morning came for CrazyMom’s folks to go home. When they pulled out of the driveway, CrazyMom promptly went upstairs to take her pregnancy test and a shower.

When I heard the shower come on, I knew it must have been negative. I also knew that while the first line for the test shows up right away, it sometimes takes a little while for the second line, which indicates a positive result, to show up. So, an idea came to my poor little noggin. I picked up a trusty blue pen, slipped into the bathroom, added a blue line to the little window on the pregnancy tester changing the “-“ to a “+”, and slipped out again.

I was standing outside of the door grinning from ear to ear when I heard the water shut off, the curtain being drawn back . . . and then the scream. My grin turned to terror as I realized my folly. I burst into the bathroom to start undoing the shock that I had induced and I found CrazyMom still standing in the shower with her face buried in her towel.

Lucky for me, she was unarmed.

As you already know, our marriage has survived this and some of my other cactus rolling episodes. One of the great lessons I have gotten from this is that if a mature adult like me still goes cactus rolling, then obviously my children will too. When a child does something that is so utterly senseless and injures another child in the process to boot, I am tempted to yell at them WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!?! Rather, I should make it a teachable moment and say, “I bet it seemed like a good idea at the moment, didn’t it? That is what we call cactus rolling. Did I ever tell you about the time I had this trusty blue pen . . .”

When Low Capacity Leads to High Capacity

For Mother’s Day, I got CrazyMom a copy of Mary Ostyn’s book A Sane Woman’s Guide to Raising a Large Family. Evidently one of the things that Mary promotes is a high-capacity front-load washer and dryer. This idea has resonated with CrazyMom, but it is important to point out that these are expensive items and that we already have a functioning washer and dryer.

On Friday morning CrazyMom was driving me to the doctor to have a medical procedure done that involved me getting knocked out for a short period of time. As we were cruising down the interstate, CrazyMom started to explain to me how she started a fund to save up for a high-capacity washer and dryer. I did a little calculation in my head and figured it would take her about a decade to save up enough money, which was great since in a decade half of our kids would be out of the house and we would no longer need them.

Late Friday afternoon I got a call on my cell from my doctor to see how I was doing. I told him that I was recuperating just fine, leaving out the fact that I was standing at a counter in an appliance store purchasing a high-capacity washer and dryer rather than resting at home.


On the way home from the store I was feeling surprisingly happy despite the amount of money that I had just spent to replace our functioning washer and dryer. Looking over at my beautiful bride I said, “Would you have ever thought this morning that we would have purchased these appliances today?”

CrazyMom smiled back. “No,” she said . . . and then she dropped the bomb . . . “especially since the anesthesiologist said that after going under you should not make any big purchases today.”

So that was it. I was operating at a low capacity which is why we ended up with a high-capacity washer and dryer. That CrazyMom is a crafty lady. At least she did not take full advantage of the situation. It is hard to believe, but I also wanted to get a new refrigerator while we were there. Luckily, CrazyMom talked me out of it.

The Ruination of a Great Hymn

Having just finished the sermon, our pastor stepped down off the stage last Sunday and our music director stepped up to lead the congregation in a closing hymn. We often sing a carefully chosen great hymn of the faith to close our service which provides an opportunity to reflect on what we have just heard.

As the words of “He Leadeth Me” appeared on the screen and the music started, a different set of words flooded my head. These were the words that I had come up with one day after church 15 years ago poking fun at the “burden” of my new wife and the “years of turmoil” that I was now facing. I focused hard on the words on the screen trying to suppress both the counterfeit words and the broad smile that was brewing in me. When I thought I had myself under control, I stole a glance at CrazyMom four kids away. Seeing her losing the battle against a smile as our eyes caught each other caused me to start to lose the war raging on my own face and I quickly turned back to focus on the words of the screen.

I was young and naïve back then. How could I have known that the alternate set of words that I came up with that day would be more prominent in our minds than the real words until this day? Needless to say, the intended effect of the closing hymn was lost on me that day.

Who Dunnit?

There are a lot of great things about having a large family, but one thing that drives me nuts is how difficult it is to figure out who dunnit.

For example, we have an intermittent toilet flusher in our home. It does not take a rocket scientist to determine who did not flush the toilet in a single-child family, but in larger families finding culprits can be a challenge. The other day I found an unflushed toilet and with minimal investigation I was able to determine the gender of the culprit. Marching into the room where the three boys were playing, I started my FBI-approved child interrogation techniques. They all denied that they had dunnit and would have implicated another brother if given the opportunity. Now it is a little harsh to say that one of my boys was lying. Whoever dunnit probably thinks that they did actually flush the toilet which is why they can so convincingly say that they are innocent and pass my internal lie detector test.

It is not just the boys, however. My mother has made for the girls bunches of these decorative hair doohickeys. Now Anna normally wears them but the other girls will sometimes use them as well. I guess the idea is that you need lots and lots of them in every shade of every color so that you can find the perfect one to match your outfit. Pretty crazy, I know.

Anyway, they were getting lost. CrazyMom would go to get Anna dressed in the morning and not be able to find the perfect matching doohickey. The obvious culprits are the older girls, but of course, they all insist that they always put them back in Anna’s room.

Stuff like this – someone not doing what they are suppose to do and you not knowing who it is – can get under your skin. I am supposed to be parenting my kids and training them to be responsible but I can’t figure out which kid needs trained. The dangerous thing is that I can start having negative feelings about suspected culprits. I mean, come on. We all know who is not flushing the toilets. And the hair doohickeys, well I will give you a hint – Miss Bookworm never wears any frilly things in her hair.

But in America it is innocent until proven guilty and I need to learn to do the same in my own home. The disappearing hair doohickey situation is a good reminder. We finally found the culprit; it was Patches, our cat.


Here is a photo of Miss Bookworm with Patches after she happened upon Patches’ secret stash of hair doohickeys under the couch.

Ahhh. . . Summer

Today is the first official day of summer break for me. While I am not willing to admit that I am a workaholic (for the obvious reason that I am not a workaholic), I did spend the day at school getting started on some school related projects. But this evening had an entirely different feel to it without the weight of an impending school day bearing down on me. CrazyMom and I went on a walk with our three youngest kids down to the creek to catch a crawdad. (We only took our youngest three because our oldest four kids took off for camp this morning.) It was a beautiful, carefree moment that captured the essence of summer for me.

Little Foot is looking for crawdads.

K.D. and Little Foot are disappearing down the creek bed following a couple of ducks.

CrazyMom is showing the crawdad we caught as it hangs from a stick.


Little Miss Anna is disappearing down the path.