Wow...those eight months with Keaton away at college certainly flew by. Keaton is enjoying his home-sweet-home again. The move back was interesting. I think the stuff in his room multiplied. I know he didn't pack all of that stuff when he moved into his dorm back in September. We were able to pack all his stuff into two vehicles when we moved him in...it took us two vehicles AND a trailer to get his stuff home again. (And that's with a few carloads of non-essential stuff he already brought home over the last month.) Unfortunately, Keaton developed some hive issues the last week at school. His elbows and hands were covered with nasty hives due to some mold and dust in his dorm room. (I told those boys they have to dust at least once a quarter. This is why I may have to live in the dorm next year.) While Keaton and Matt loaded the vehicles and trailer, I cleaned and mopped. So, of course, I was covered in hives before we left. Needless to say, Keaton and I toasted the end of his freshman year by sharing a bottle of Benadryl.
Speaking of Benadryl, I kept the bottle handy over the weekend while traipsing through the Huron National Forest during our Geocache Road Rally. We went with our friends up north to Roscommon for a weekend of camping and caching. (For those of you who don't know about geocaching, it's like a treasure hunt using a GPS.) We had 52 caches to find in 24 hours throughout Roscommon County. We spent a lot of time driving from cache to cache on two-track roads and then hiking through the woods. (They call them roads...I definitely think they should be called trails.) Oh, and did I mention that it poured the night before so everything was especially wet and muddy? Our friends' Jeep had a few inches of caked-on mud by Sunday, but luckily we didn't get stuck once. Whew! (I called dibs on driving and not pushing if we got stuck. There was no way in hell I was getting covered in mud.) We had a lot of laughs and found all 52 caches in 15 hours after driving about 200 miles total. (Well, the guys did. We girls stayed in the car when it got dark because I didn't want to lose any more blood to the mosquitoes and I especially didn't want to stumble upon a bear. Remember, I wear lotion that smells like cotton candy.) All in all, it was a fun adventure. The best part of it all is that I never once had to pee in the woods. Thank God. The guys were kind enough to find us appropriate restrooms to use. Matt knows me well and was happy I was willing to spend a weekend out of my comfort zone...I don't like bugs, I don't like to get dirty, and I refuse to pee in the woods. Overall, I guess I really didn't get out of my comfort zone much: I didn't go after the caches that looked muddy or were deep in the woods; I enjoyed hot showers and the comfort of our heated motor home at night; I enjoyed eating in a restaurant; and I slept in on Sunday while Matt was up at 7 a.m. to find the last seven caches. Now they want me to go geocaching more with them. We'll see...I still think geocaching would be more fun if there was jewelry in the caches.
