Story Time with Clara

The following story is rated PG for some adult language. To the best of my knowledge, all characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Transcript:
Clara: Leah has a mom, and her name is Halloweah. She has a dad and his name is Halloweenie-beast.
Me: Halloweenie-beast?
Clara: Yup.
Me: What did their family do?
Clara: Her family does, she spits. And she says, "stupid" and "dammit."
Me: That's not ok to say, is it?
Clara: She says that.
Me: They must have different rules than we do.
Clara: Yup.
Me: What else does her family do?
Clara: Um, my family and my friends, and I have another friend whose name is, um, Charliveeliva.
Me: Charliveeliva? What does Charliveliva do?
Clara: She has blue hair and red eyes.
Me: Is she scary or is she nice?
Clara: She's nice. She does bad things.
Me: Like what?
Clara: She has trees in her mouth.
Me: She has trees in her mouth?
Clara: That's a bad thing. And when I go to her house, she hit me, on the cheek.
Me: What did you do about that?
Clara: I telled her to stop hitting me in the cheek. She hit me right here.
Me: Did it hurt?
Clara: Yeah, but it goes away. Mom, I want to take a picture.
Me: Are you done with your story?
Clara: Yup.

The End.

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Camping, a Train, more Camping, and a Hike

In an effort to steal some family time before hunting season and cold weather arrive, we've been camping. Two camping trips in three weeks. The main event during the first camping trip was a family ride on the Conway Scenic Railroad. You may remember that we rode the same train during a camping trip last year. This time, Charlie was able to enjoy the ride too. It's fun to look back at how much Clara has grown.

After dinner by the campfire and some leftover sparklers, we went to bed tired and happy that night. Then everyone (by everyone, I mean the entire campground) woke up at 1:30 in the morning to Clara screaming that her ear hurt. After hours several minutes of screaming, a short walk around outside, and some Motrin, Clara settled down and went back to sleep. We woke up early on Sunday to pack our things. Jared apologized to our neighbors and we headed home via the pediatrician's office. After some antibiotics to treat Clara's ear infection (first one in over two years, great timing), she was feeling much better.

Two weeks later, we decided to tempt fate and go camping again. This time, we went with our friends, Eric and Brooke. It was Labor Day weekend, so we sent the guys up north early to stake out a campsite at one of the many first come, first serve campgrounds. To make a long story short, the guys chose one of the only reservable campgrounds and set up on one of the only reserved campsites. While Jared and Eric were out to lunch, the campground host and the Sherriff packed up our two tents, six sleeping bags and pads, five camp chairs, camp stove, three coolers, three bins of food, and a table cloth. I won't mention that the reserved site they chose was right next to the site we had two weeks prior, because I can't explain how they didn't know it was reserved. Luckily, Jared and Eric were able to retrieve all our things and set up camp again at another campground.

We spent Saturday morning hiking to the waterfalls. It was a beautiful day and everyone was anxious to stretch their legs. Charlie rode/napped in our new backpack. Clara rode half way in the other backpack and hiked the rest herself.

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