I'm exhausted. And not ready to start school tomorrow. But we had a great time, generally speaking. We did a huge amount of cooking and cleaning (the kids did the bulk of it, with some guidance and assistance from us grown-up types), and there were some fun activities too. Tuesday we went canoeing on Big River: we did a total of two hours of actual canoeing, and we had a stop on the river for lunch. It was cold and grey, but we saw harbor seals (SO cute) and April's canoe (she was the other chaperone) saw two baby otters (even cuter than the seals). We also saw a heron, two cormorants, and a seagull wrangle (that was because we were having lunch).

The kids also got to play tourist in Mendocino without any grownups watching them (I showed April around), which they loved.

We picked a huge quantity of blackberries and made 51 jars of jam. Well, the kids and I cooked up all the jam, they canned about 20 jars, and I canned the rest. But it was nice quiet time all by myself, which I needed by that point, so it was good. And it smelled delicious and was steamy and meditative, so I got humidified and relaxed all at the same time. Kind of like a blackberry facial. :)

Thursday was a hard day. One of the kids had gotten bit by a spider, and had a bad reaction. He had a goose-egg swollen lump on his leg, that did for a while turn reddish, but after Benadryl it started to shrink a little, and his low fever went down, so we didn't end up having to take him to ER or anything. Naturally I was on the phone with his parents several times. And it had rained the night before on the kids' tents, so although they stayed dry, their sleeping bags did by morning absorb some moisture just from the air. So we had sleeping bags draped everywhere inside, and we had to run a couple of loads of laundry, and we were trying to make jam and deal with the spider bite (and a boy all loopy on Benadryl), and we were supposed to leave the house at 2:30 to go to my mom's for monoprinting. We did manage to leave by 3:30, I think. And monoprinting was great and they loved doing it, but dinner was late, and we didn't get back to my dad's until close to 10. I decided to let them sleep inside the house, because I feared more wet weather, and when they brought their mattresses in from the tents, all the foam ones had wicked up a large quantity of water from underneath the tents where the water had pooled on their groundcover tarps. Of course. So we had to figure out new beds for some of them (which we did), and it was just a late night. I gratefully escaped to my aunt's house (leaving wonderful, amazing April in charge of their bedtime routine), where my aunt gave me mint tea and cookies, and we watched the premiere of Survivor: Guatemala. Go Margaret, nurse practitioner! Yay Stephenie's team for finally winning something!

I think the hardest part about the trip was the weather: it didn't get nice until Friday morning. So the kids were inside a lot more than they have been on previous trips; that was tiring, and they didn't get as much physical activity as I would have liked. But Friday morning we went to MacKerricher State Park, and Ranger Natalie (cute as a button and very passionate about her work) gave them a lovely lesson on the grey whale skeleton that they had displayed there (the whale washed up in the park in '87), and then about marine algae on the shore. So that was good.

And then just after I sent them all off with April to the beach while I finished up the jam that afternoon, it started to rain. But they stayed at the beach, playing in the rain, and I got to relax with my dad and Ayn. My dad tuned up his autoharp and I brought in my guitar, and we got to do a few tunes together before the kids got back. That just shifted everything. Friday was a good day. Really.

And we came back on Saturday, arriving back at school at 6:00 pm. Which is why I had planned ahead of time that we wouldn't have school today for the Junior High, because I love my students, but I knew I'd need a full weekend to relax and unwind from the trip before getting back into the swing of it with them again. And they needed the break from each other and from me too.

Hmmm... I think I'm all talked out (well, all writ out anyway) for now.