Archery, storage, and wild horses

The girls started their archery lessons this past week. The Heart of Maryland Bowhunters have a range in Patapsco State Park. The girls each got to shoot several times, even Lyla. She technically isn't old enough to take the lessons but they let her try anyway and she did really good. All three girls did really well. They all hit the targets. I was surprised that Lyla stayed focused the whole time, waiting for her turn and waiting until the line was cold to get her arrows. I must say that archery is one sport I have no problem getting into. So far they all have decided to ask for real bows and arrows for Christmas.

We finally got our storage unit.  Hopefully getting a good bit of our belongings into the storage unit and out of our apartment will allow us a little more living space.  We've been taking a van-load at a time.  The girls think this is super fun.  They really like the carts that we take our things into the building on.

This past weekend was our much-anticipated camping trip to Assateague State Park.  I promise I did check the weather before we went, and it was supposed to be sunny and warmish.  However, I did not recheck the weather the day we left... when the weather forecast changed.  The wind was blowing up to 30 mph gusts the entire weekend and the actual temperature did not rise above 60 at all.  Needless to say, the clothes we brought were not adequate.  It was so cold that I wouldn't even let the girls take a shower the whole time, because they would be so cold after they got out.  We looked forward to going to wash our hands because we could stand under the hot-air hand dryer for a while before plunging back out into the cold.  I once again did not pack myself very well and ended up wearing the same clothes the whole weekend, complete with my pajamas underneath to stay warm.  We all looked pretty rough by the time we went home. (and smelled a bit ripe as well)  There were some fun times though.  We got to play on the beach.  The girls made the mistake of getting their feet wet only once.  Once was enough to believe Jason and I that they would be miserable with cold feet later.  We found all kinds of cool things on the beach like horseshoe crabs, skate egg casks, sea horses, and of course lots of shells.  We got to see a huge snake on one of our walks.  And of course we saw the horses.  Two of them actually opened our cooler and attempted to eat our food, but Jason shooed him off.  One of the horses was pregnant, which Celee especially was excited about.  She very much wants to go back to see the baby horses later.  Sure, we're just not staying in a tent.  I never thought about how much noise a tent makes in the wind.  Or the fact that the wind can blow the sides so hard that the tent can actually hit you in the head while you're asleep... or at least trying to sleep.  Jason described it best.  It was like trying to sleep inside a paper bag being tossed in a dryer, but cold.  Anyway, the Assateague horses are neat, but also funny in a Ren and Stimpy sort of way.  They are just kind of scruffy looking and pesky.  They have a kind of crazy sounding whinney too.  When we would hear it, it was like, "Oh no!  Here come the crazy horses!  Put the food up!"  I am glad that we got to see them though.  I feel like this "vacation" was like a Berenstain vacation.  Many things went wrong, but we had some fun and made some memories.  We found some campfire recipes we like and will try again.  We told some crazy stories around the campfire.  We saw really cool wildlife.  The girls saw the Atlantic Ocean that wasn't next to Florida.  No one got seriously hurt.  It didn't rain.  (I think that would have been the last straw)  We learned some things about what to do the next time we go camping.   So all in all, it was good.  It kind of fits into the story of how things go in the Montgomery house anyway.  Picture perfect isn't something we can do.  Take-a-picture-of-that-b/c-it-is-cray is more our style.