Eric frequently talks about his idyllic childhood. He and his two older brothers spent a lot of free time playing in a corn field and in some nearby woods. He has a great appreciation of the outdoors and the changing of the seasons and attributes that to the freedom he had to roam as a child. One of his greatest regrets for our own children is that we don't live near any wild spaces. (Or rather, we have to drive to the nearest wild spaces.) Our kids spend a lot of time outdoors, but that time is primarily in the yards and an empty lot on our street.
We caravanned (literally since both families drive minivans) to Eric's old neighborhood, and most everyone got out to explore Eric and Bryan's old stomping grounds. I didn't feel like getting the baby out and lugging her around, so I stayed in the van with her. Pretty soon I saw Ike and a nephew racing up the hill back to the vans. I thought, "Well that was short excursion," but then I saw all the other kids racing back and rolled down my window to ask my niece what the hullabaloo was about. She told me two kids had been stung by something, but she didn't seem to know which kids. Turns out, Felix had been stung about 10-12 times by some angry hornets. We think he must have stepped on a nest. Our youngest niece was also stung once or twice.
We made our way to Walgreens and bought various medicines for the poor kid. By the time we were ready to get on the White River, Felix was doing great. He is such a trooper. (And I swear, he has some of the most painful things happen to him! It's really not fair!)
The actual canoeing was beautiful but quite hot. Felicia was happy for about the first half hour, and then she was over it.
We passed a lot of people floating down the river, and a few canoeing down it, and nearly all commented on our large crew. And we didn't even have everyone with us! (Our oldest nephew stayed home because he's too cool for family time.)
When we were all done the kids played in the river and got very gross. I was shuttling with my sister-in-law back to the starting point to get our van so we could go home.
I don't have pictures, but we stopped at a pizza place before heading home, and the old people in the restaurant gave us a lot of dirty looks because there were nine children aged 1-11 in our crew.
On Sunday we did the usual Sunday things. I made sure to get a picture of the nearly-twin cousins together (one day apart). They had so much fun together and got along much better than they did when they were together earlier in the summer (or the summer before that).
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