We only have two days left to get ready for our week-long adventure away from home. We'll be leaving on Sunday and returning on Tuesday the next week.

I picked up some firewood that I need to splinter into small enough pieces for our wood stove, my wife is preparing a bunch of easy-to-reheat meals to make the camping experience easier (something we've learned). Camping is not the time for complicated cooking experiences - not if you have six children under 10!

We visited the "Community Meeting" that we saw posted in our neighborhood. There were a bunch of faces I recognized, but some I didn't. It's not a huge neighborhood, we really should know most of the people here. This was a great opportunity to chit-chat and introduce ourselves. We've lived here 11 years, it's about time!

We arrived pretty late, everyone had name tags on (which I found funny) and the meeting was being moderated using parliamentary proceedings. "all in favor say aye". I had to laugh at how formal this "community meeting" was, but it's better than chaos!

This was the first time my children have been to a "pub". It wasn't very roudy (thankfully) and the meeting was in a separate room from the bar. It was more of a restaurant than a bar, anyway. We don't own a TV, so all the screens with different things on them distracted all of us, I kept finding myself looking at the images all over the place, so did my children. Made it a little difficult to concentrate and listen. We've gathered that there's a little bit of a running joke in the neighborhood about my family, that we're "amish" because of the size of our family and because the girls often wear long dresses. I find that funny too, makes me think of the Weird Al song "Amish Paradise". Don't they notice we drive a car?

At the pub, my children asked a lot of questions. My son asked me "What are those numbers on the screen?" I realized he was talking about keno. I said "It's gambling, son. You can loose a lot of money that way." Then I explained how the "game" worked and informed him that he's too young to play.

In some ways our children a somewhat sheltered, but we don't shy away from explaining things "in the real world". We don't explain everything, if it's inappropriate for their age, but we don't really keep a whole lot hidden from them. But if they ask a direct question, they will often get a direct answer, so long as it's from their parents!

We ordered some food the children as a snack, some fries and cheese sticks. And a pitcher of Sprite. The children thought it was water. Because our children drink water. They were very surprised at the sweet, bubbly water at this place.

Bless the Most High!

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