I am finally recovered enough to write this post. Friday I got Mary and Andrew out of school early and I left Andrew and Catherine with Chuck while Mary and I drove up 95 to Pumunkey Ridge Girl Scout Camp.

I have decided that this will be the last over night away from Catherine until she weans. Any of you who have breastfed know why (and it’s not because it was hard on her… she did fine and bit fussy at times but fine) and those who didn’t can probably guess.

The plan was for the girls to go horseback riding friday evening when we arrived, do a service project and some badge work on Saturday, and go riding again sunday before we went home. Well since it decided to rain all day friday and into the night the riding got canceled on friday as did our servce project on saturday (we were going to stain a shed). The girls got the badgework done, went letterboxing and rode bikes on friday and saturday.

The girls did get to ride on sunday. They had a great time inspite of how cold it was. I got a few pictures taken and i’ll put up a couple later once i’ve had a chance to look through them.

as mary went on her troop camping trip to celebrate the end of the year she earned her last 2 patches…. i hope… the poor girl has run out of room on her vest…. as you can see

the front
and

the back

her total… 28 fun and event patches and 28 try-its…. and i swear we did not do it on purpose it just worked out that way.

At the Virginia Marine Science Museum.

Friday and Saturday were a girl scout event. The girls were to meet at the Virginia Marine Science Museum at 6:45 friday evening. That is quite a feat when driving from Richmond in beach traffic. What should be a 2 1/2 – 3 hour drive took FOUR HOURS. Mary, Catherine and I left home at 3:30 pm. We stopped to at a Wendy’s drive through to get dinner and IF traffic had cooperated we would have made the 6:45 pm arrival time… but NO… traffic didn’t cooperate and it took us close to an hour to get from the mile warning for the Chesapeake bay bridge tunnel to the other side.

Once we arrived (late along with about 1/2 the other girls) every thing went really well. The girls had a great time and Catherine surprised everyone by being very pleasant and cooperative. I got several comments the next morning about how they hadn’t heard her in the night at all.

I managed some pictures on my phone (i didn’t feel up to juggling a baby and a camera and the phone did a half decent job).

first up was a lesson on salinity of ocean water with Jenna.

And an experiment on floating in fresh and saltwater.

Then Kim talked to them about the Chesapeake bay watershed. Mary got REALLY excited when she mentioned the Susquehanna river.

The girls also got a chance to pet a salamander. Mary declined.

Lastly Harold talked to the girls about reptiles.

And the girls got a chance to pet Ruben the corn snake. And once again Mary declined.

Then we had some free time to explore the tanks.

We saw a Sea turtle.

Mary didn’t want to touch the rays.

even though they were VERY friendly.

We were spread through various areas of the aquarium to sleep… our troop was next to the tanks with the fish from the chesapeake bay.

The next morning we were served a small breakfast and packed up our gear before the museum opened for the day. But we were able to stay and walk through the exhibits as long as we liked.

It was fun. Mary AND Catherine both enjoyed it… Catherine didn’t know that fish or fish tanks came that big.