Happy Campers

The Pruetz family is back and I have good news: We survived our first camping trip! We are tired, dirty and a little ripe, but we had a fun time.

We left Saturday morning for McKinney Falls State Park in Austin, about 70 miles north of here. We arrived at the campsite around 11:00 a.m. and met up with my sister and her family, as well as a number of friends. In all, there were about 40 people there! We immediately pitched our nine-person tent (borrowed from our neighbors, as our poor little four-person tent is no longer sufficient) and got settled in. Then the fun began.

There was talking. And eating. Todd took Gracie on a "hike" (in other words, he carried her on his shoulders for a couple of miles) and then took Devin down to see the falls. There was some sitting around and some playing of cards (the game, "Spoons," was hit) and then some more eating.

The thing about camping was this: I wasn't required to do anything. I didn't have to feel lazy about sitting around. There was no kitchen to mop, or laundry to do. The meals were divided up by family, so I didn't even have to worry about cooking until this morning. I had to make sure the kiddos were happy and making life miserable for anyone and the hardest part of the weekend was keeping the babies entertained. We weren't too keen on allowing them to crawl through our three combined campsites, so they spent the whole time held or in their Pack-n-Plays. They weren't thrilled and I had to put them in the van and drive them around to get them to take a nap yesterday afternoon.

But aside from these few bumps, it was a good trip. We agree that we won't be camping again as long as the girls are crawling, but my guess is we only have about six weeks left until walking begins anyway. I forsee another trip for us this fall (it's way to hot to camp during the summer in Texas).

On a completely different note, I start work tomorrow.

Didn't see that coming, huh? :)

My former employer, MySanAntonio.com has been looking for someone to do some production work for them -- posting some blogs, proofing and posting feedback, working on client pages, etc. When I heard they were in need, I said, "I'll do this for you on a parttime basis, if you'll let me do it from home." The company's general manager and my friend, Julie, decided that was a good idea and so in my spare time, I'll be doing some work for the site. It's a perfect situation -- a few hours a day, some extra money and the ability to do it all from home. MySanAntonio.com came through for me 18 months ago when they allowed me to work parttime in sales and, once again, they've created a perfect situation for me. What more could I ask for?

I'm actually really looking forward to the whole thing. It'll be nice to use that part of my brain that has not been used in a long while. While I don't miss the stress of holding down a career and a family, I do miss working and this should be a perfect fix for me.

In other news, Todd's new job is doing great. Not unexpectedly, he's already gotten accolades from the VPs and other high-ups and seems to have found a good friend in his boss. I don't doubt that he will go very far in this company.

The babies are doing great, too. They're all over the place and are pulling up on everything. They even pull up on the walls. That was the last step for Devin before he started walking, so as I said before, I don't think we'll be at this crawling stage much longer.

Devin had a great time camping and we're looking forward to doing some fun MOMS Club activities in the coming months, now that things have finally slowed down.

So I guess that's about it for us. More fabulous updates as they happen.

E