Instead of selling her to gypsies

I have a new threat for when Clementine gets all whiny or unreasonable: I can feed her to the bears. Too bad she isn't too afraid of them. When we walked into the visitor center at the park where we camped, she was instantly interested in dentistry, which is good since I've been disturbed by recent proclamations of things being scary (especially when she says Mama scary). While it tickled her to meet something she had only read about in books up close and personal, I wondered a little but about what it would like to come across a real bear...or real poison ivy, for that matter. The same visitor center had a display that allowed you to fondle fake poison ivy plants so to better be able to identify them. I think the concept of both was lost on her, but she sure did have fun:



That's right! I finally got my camping pictures off the camera after my mom mentioned for the tenth time that my sister's pictures sure were nice.

Clementine was very excited about a few things while we were camping, all of which you can see in abundance in the whole group of photos (click any photo to see more): Crocs, her cousins, Laura, her hoodie, the beach, the sand and being naked. Oh, and Macaroni and Cheese, which she pronounces "mock-ee cheese" every six or seven seconds whenever anyone is eating in her vicinity. Even after the first few days of blissfully warm water faded to days with cool breezes from the north and even cooler water, Clementine couldn't stay away from the lake:




We biked out the lighthouse, which didn't make much of an impression at the time--after she realized they weren't going to let her go to the top she was much more interested in dancing on the boardwalk and swapping Crocs with cousin Nora. But a few days later as we packed the car up to head home, we asked her where she thought we were going (thinking that of course she'd say "home" since she had been demanding "baby go home" all morning). Nope, she said lighthouse and then cried a good portion of the way out of town that she wanted to go the lighthouse, not home.



Since we hadn't thought to bring along her toy kitchen (or the myriad other outrageous toys she demanded at various points during the trip), we let her use the cook stove to make--you guessed it--Mac-y Cheese. She did such an excellent job that now Nate and I are developing a way for her to safely prepare all our meals while we sit on the couch and watch movies:



On the last day she demanded three ponies (her name for pony tails), gingerbread and pizza. We kept her in the wilderness with the bears too long: the kid has no manners and is very messy.




Somehow we managed to squeeze all the stuff from our luxury camping experience back into Nate's car and get home. Beneath it all, you can just make out the child: