Snipe. Snipe. Snipe.

• We arrived Sunday afternoon to Harrisville State Park which opens up onto beautiful Lake Huron. It had been rainy that day, so the white caps were coming in strong. It made for fun swimming.
• We weren't at the campground more than twenty minutes, and Owen's glasses were swept out to sea never to be seen again. We were so tired from traveling and so excited about the waves, we neglected to take the precaution of removing them before he went in the water.
• He was devastated.
• I, was not. I was already in full vacation mode. Nothing could remove my level of relaxation. They were gone. Let's not ruin the rest of the trip.
• He screamed at the water, "I need those to read!"
• My wife kept asking me if I was "really angry." As if I was hiding it well or something.
• Nope.
• Skunks. Skunks everywhere!
• Our first morning in camp was greeted with a tiny neighbor girl trying to get us to look at a jar. Her father asked, "Would you like your kids to come over and see our bat? We found him on our tent this morning. He's been acting kind of sickly, so we put him in a jar."
• Let me interject this tidbit: I'm paranoid and deathly afraid of the idea of rabies. Bats and Skunks are two of the most common animals to carry said disease.
• I shook my head in a negative manner, but I think the expression on my face conveyed much more. Shortly thereafter, the little girl returned. In a rather crestfallen voice she told us that the bat had been let go. I think the father realized handling bats, especially those "acting kind of sickly," was not a great idea for anyone.
• I actually felt a bit guilty for conveying so much with my face.
• My camping trip seemed to have a theme emerging - me facing my fears without ruining the vacation with fits of anxiety. I'm happy to say I conquered from beginning to end.
• I don't sleep well in strange places. It takes me a few days to settle in. So, I often don't sleep well when on vacation. The first night in camp wasn't too bad as far as noise was concerned.
• The second night, trains started going through. There are tracks in the front of the park, so we're talking less than a block or so from our site. I can't relay in words how loud their cautionary horns were. There were multiple trains that second night. Good times.
• You can successfully cook chicken noodle soup over a campfire. It was great!
• Those huge marshmallows that they sell now, you better have a good cooking fork. Once those things go molten, it's near impossible to keep them on a stick. They are perfect for smores though.
• Another tip: if they go molten and start to fall, DON'T TRY TO CATCH THEM WITH YOUR BARE HAND!
• When you get into small towns, like Harrisville, it's fun to visit their grocery stores. They're very different than the stores I'm used to. Their selection is small on most things. Harrisville has one grocery store, and I don't believe there's another grocer for at least thirty miles. Even in the neighboring towns, the stores are pretty basic.
• This IGA in Harrisville, they had a huge Michigan-based, micro-brewed beer selection. How very surprising. My wife and I love to sample micro-brewed beer. We drink about two bottles a week, and we share those two bottles. So, it's not about the buzz. It's about the flavor. We generally hate most big chain beers.
• They also had this rootbeer called Frostop everywhere I went up there. It's hard to find down this way, but I highly recommend it. They also make a Carmel Cream Soda that is like nothing I've ever drank before. 99¢ gets you a 40 oz.
• The first 40 I ever drank was a Cream Soda.
• The best part of my whole three-night camping experience: Taking Owen on a Snipe Hunt, just the two of us. Harrisville State Park has a great, semi-paved nature trail perfect for Snipe hunting in the dark. I told him that snipes were small, elf-like creatures with bright red noses. We walked about a block into the woods saying, "Snipe. Snipe. Snipe." After a while, I asked Owen if he'd remembered the cheese? Snipes won't come out if there's no cheese. We turned around, toward camp when the flashlight started to flicker. Did I mention the bats and skunks?
• Praying on a deserted beach with a full moon overhead, waves crashing just a few feet away - great experience!

Non-Camping Randomness:

• How can I put this nicely? Who loved the G.I.Joe movie? I was never a big fan, so this isn't a fanboy whine fest, but I watched the cartoon when I was a kid. I found the recent live-action movie comical on many levels, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be. They're now making a sequel, and they've attracted some huge action-star names: Bruce Willis and The Rock. I guess it's a good sign. Maybe part 2 will be infinitely better.
• We were playing Apples to Apples with some friends the other day. Someone made the euphemism between coconuts and breasts. It wasn't me.
• The very next day we're driving on Miller Road, and for whatever reason, Gage points out Hooters. I think it was the owl that caught his attention. The boys wanted to know what kind of restaurant it was. I jokingly said they have coconuts. Owen replied, "They have milk in them!" Heidi and I laughed. The kids were puzzled.
• I never thought I'd do a post mentioning Hooters.
• I'm sure I'm guilty of not hearing the words coming from my mouth. Sitting at the play area in Genesee Valley Mall recently with the kids, a mom sits down near me. As her barefoot son runs up she says, "I sure wish you had socks to wear so you didn't have to walk around on this dirty flooring filled with the fungus of all these other barefooted kids here."
• Wow. So, my kids and the other children present were apparently quite dirty in her estimation, and she didn't feel ashamed at all to share that with the rest of us.
• She did leave pretty quickly after that, so maybe her words finally sunk in to her own ears.
• Before anyone points it out, I know, they're supposed to be wearing socks. I've also noticed that very few kids ever do in the Summer. Too many kids are wearing sandals.
• Socks and Summer do not go hand-in-hand.
• I like fish. I love pizza. I hate anchovies. Nasty.
• On a related, tongue-in-cheek note: I'm in mourning. My favorite pizza place in Davison, Rocco's Pizza, was sold last week. It's gone. Gone.
• I took the kids to a Vacation Bible School a few weeks back. I wore a t-shirt that says, "I don't go to church…" on the front, and "I am the church." on the back. It didn't wear it because I wanted to make a statement. It was really the only t-shirt I had clean that day. Every day there was this one lady that insisted I stay long enough to hear the opening worship songs. She said it was because she feared Gage would be more comfortable with me there, but I think she just missed the back of my shirt.
• Snipe. Snipe. Snipe.

Some Thoughts on Parenting: Random

• Cartoon characters often teach bad lessons right along side the good lessons. Curious George should be a convicted felon ten times over. Animated ducks and frogs often steal, break into, and destroy other people's property, people that are rarely revealed. Is it any wonder empathy is a lost concept in our society?
• Kids like Spaghetti-O's. I think I would like them if they didn't smell that way when you first open a can. It's not that they taste bad. It's just, there's something strange in that sauce, the way it smells when it's cold. Maybe I watched Food Inc. a few too many times.
• Kids don't care about character development. Don't believe me? Rent one of the movies you loved a child. Not an Oscar winner, but one of the more ridiculous ones. See how well its held up for you. There's nothing worse than having your three year old fall in love with a plot-less, poorly animated, two-hour long, straight to video mess. My parents remember these as the Benji movies.
• Coloring books are just as expensive as toys these days. When I was a kid, my parents always tried to appease me with coloring books. They were cheap. Now they rival the price of action figures from $6-7.
• Parenting groups used to complain that cartoons and toy lines were too closely integrated. Now, the cartoons themselves are about games and toys. It's like they've broken the 4th wall, and no one cares. Yu-Gi-Oh! is a cartoon based on a card game where they actually use the game (playing it) as the plot of the show.
• I know this is cliche, but when you become a parent, sleep takes on limitations. For the most part, my kids sleep from around 9 p.m. to 7 or 8 a.m. I'm not complaining about that, but as a parent you give up the right to a complete night's sleep. On ANY night, I can be woken at any hour to address illnesses, bathroom needs, and/or nightmares. It's often the night you least suspect.
• Do I need to mention what this can do to your sex life? Interruptions?
• I live by the four hour sleep rule: If I get four hours of mostly uninterrupted sleep, I'm good.
• All kids are brats. Let me clarify. All kids are innocent brats. They don't know what they're doing. They don't know what consequences are, especially in social situations. At some point they learn to be purposeful brats or to monitor their own behavior. I think that's the distinction some non-parents miss. Not all kids are purposeful in their brat-i-tude. Most learn to act correctly after making mistakes and being shown the consequences.
• Kids are crazy eaters. One day they love cauliflower, the next it's like Kryptonite. Who can keep track of these crazy changes?
• My kids don't like ketchup. Not even a little. My kid brother used to eat it with a spoon as a main course. I don't know what to do with that. I guess I used to hate cheese.
• There are some positive sides to the strange eating habits of kids: I can cook hot dogs, grilled cheese, or make peanut butter sandwiches for any meal, and they're satisfied. I can add canned corn to any meal, and they'll at least eat something. They've actually fallen for the line, "Broccoli is like eating mini-trees."
• Also, pop is like the holy grail to them. I can tell them anything is pop, and it'll be gone in under thirty seconds. The title of candy has similar powers, but they've gotten wise when we try to label medicine as candy.
• To the parents that hate kids' meals that come with toys because they entice our children into eating unhealthy meals: Sometimes I need to have a night where I don't have to cook, a night where I know they're going to eat the entire meal even if it's not the best for them. Sometimes those little toys are so cool, we don't have to put up with inquiries about real toys for months. Sometimes it's very convenient that my kids eat a burger and then play for an hour on a conveniently located playscape in the same restaurant. Especially in the Winter, that might be more exercise than we can accommodate otherwise. I'm just saying, everything in moderation is still within my job description, and I think I've got it under control.

My Love Affair with Banana Peppers

I used to joke with my vegetarian friends that, if I switched to a vegetarian diet, I'd quickly starve to death. The list of vegetables I like was very short until I was in my thirties.

In my quest to eat healthier, I've come to love certain kinds of peppers. This is one of those statements that, if you had told me a few short years ago that I'd be craving banana peppers, I'd have told you that you were crazy.

I think the problem is, the hurtle I needed to get over involved green peppers. Green peppers are, of course, the grand-daddy of peppers. They're the staple pepper that everyone likes. To this day, I can't stand them. I hate the flavor. Always have.

My best friend in grade school brought them in his lunch almost every day as a snack. I thought he was crazy. I tried them multiple times usually resulting in gagging and sick feelings for the rest of the day. That's the extent to which I hate green peppers. Cooking them doesn't help either. Yuck.

I grew chili peppers in my garden last year. I knew I could use them to flavor salsa and chili. I even thought I might can some for friends, but that never happened. They became my gateway pepper. They rubbed me the right way. They opened my mind to new possibilities.

I've always liked the smell of cooking peppers. I especially like the smell of banana peppers on pizza. So, a few months ago, I tried them. They were great! I thought it must be because they were cooked though, dried from the heat with less flavor. But, I started to crave them after that. Before I knew what was happening, I was eating them on sandwiches right out of the can. I'm hooked now. It's actually becoming a problem. I'm putting them on everything.

I started buying other peppers to mix into my homemade guacamole. I even picked up a few Hungarian Yellows thinking they were similar to Bananas. They weren't bad raw… Well… They weren't bad tasting raw, but they did some gnarly things to my stomach. I won't be purchasing them again. Oy.

So, I can now add certain peppers to that growing list of things I used to hate but now love.

The list is as follows:

• Broccoli
• Salads
• Cauliflower
• Tartar Sauce
• Brussels Sprouts
• Asparagus
• Artichoke Hearts
• Egg Plant
• Mayo (none of that Miracle Whip garbage)
• Green Onions (every other kind is gross)
• Cooked Carrots
• Salsa
• Avocado
• Guacamole
• Banana Peppers

I can't blame my parents for any of this either. They always tried to get me to try new things, and I totally believe that my taste buds were just different back then. I feel like such a big boy eating vegetables for a change. I wish I could like celery though. I've tried it so many times, and I still just hate it.