Lord of the Flies (and mosquitoes)

What do you do when you realize there is no food in the refridgerator for dinner, and no time to shop?  You take the kids to the only place open for dinner on base...the bowling alley!  This was not a well thought out plan.  The kids have never been to a bowling alley before.  I was simply thinking "it's dollar night" not "the kids will try to run down the lanes".  Sigh.  I'm soooo glad there were only a few people there.

The minute we arrived, Kai keyed in on the balls and was trying to pick them up.  Then there was the mad dash for the pins (we weren't even past the first lane!).  Of course the twins wanted in on that action!  So it was a 'herding hummingbirds' (harder than herding cats) trying to get all the kids into a booth so that I could get some food.  One of our fellow Fam Campers, Maureen, was there for dinner with her hubby, and watched (from a distance) with humor at our little adventure.  And this was just for the food!  We haven't even gotten to the bowling part yet.  "Lonnie" and I were already exhausted and I spent extra time at the food counter talking with the burger guy just to avoid being near the fray.

The wild child antidote is pizza.  It created silence and relative stillness for a whole 5 minutes.  Blissful minutes.  The possibility of keeping the wild children away from the bowling action was no longer an option.  They were fueled and rested.  Bowling we went.  At first we tried the 'push the ball' option, but that took too much attention from one parent, allowing the other two to run roughshod around the unsuspecting victim, I mean other parent-usually in the direction of down the lanes.  It took 4 frames to instill the 'line rule' into the kids-as in, if you cross the line we will make YOU the ball.  This seemed a bit exciting and was not the best deterent.  Thankfully, the burger guy came to our rescue with the ball ramp.  Now, all the kids were interested in pushing the ball and then waiting for it to return.  Until Nemo was thrown into the ball return.  That slowed things down a bit and created enough diversion for the kids to scatter again (little monkeys are getting smarter!).  Only a return of the ball signaled a return of the children.  To our surprise, bowling a success!  We may never do it again.

Now that we've witnessed the wild ferral children succeeding at teamwork in a conspiracy to have us committed, we are becoming concerned that they are developing a democracy--and we are not on the ballot!  We had our first Thirsty Thursday gathering at the Fam Camp pavilion. It's a tradition with the Fam Camp students that every Thursday is the "meet, drink, and be merry" day. We had a good turnout for this year's first class. There were kids of the 4-legged variety, and it was really a toss up on who's kids were muddier. Ella, the white dog from next door, had already discvoered the mud hole and taken full advantage of the opportunity to increase its size.  By the time the wild, ferral children arrived, a sizable pond had been created.  A vote was taken, we were not consulted.  Mud swimming was going to happen.

Kai distinguished himself as leader of the mud-pit jumping team (competing for Olympic Gold!) and proceeded to remove all of his clothing, pee in the mud, and then jump into it. It was truly a sight that only a parent with a pitcher of beer in front of her would think was funny.   There was really no good action to be taken that would have prevented me from getting muddy, so I took pictures.  Again, very thankful for that outdoor shower!  And again, we had a meeting at school about Kai and his 'free love' ideals.  At least we were able to convince him that underwear was not optional.  I'm very grateful that my fellow Fam Campers are very gracious in their witness of our parenting fails, it gives me hope that we may survive the year without enemies.  I mean, the dogs seem to like them.