Saturday, August 13, 2005

Weekend at Standwell Day 2

We woke up this morning to the sun shining. And the cowbell at the main cabin ringing for breakfast. The girls bounced up, dressed and went off to have breakfast. Bret showered, and I just lay there a bit longer, not having slept well all night. Finally Allison poked her head in and said very formally, "Mother, won't you join us?"

I got up after that.

Today was spent working. Well, at least for Bret anyhow. A previous storm had downed one of the pine trees around the cabin, and Bret helped cut the trunk up to replace the older stumps around the campfire area.



This turned into quite a task. The first few cut fine but Bret quickly came to a literal impasse with the roots of the tree (which we determined to be 150 years old thanks to Allison's careful ring-counting). 30 minutes after working on it, we all had lunch. After lunch, he returned, and TWO HOURS LATER he finally broke through the stubborn root. Even the chainsaw came apart and had to be fixed in the middle of it all. It was cute, Bret working on that trunk with his grandfather right there supervising. Though I think he was just using every bit of willpower not to jump in to help. Which he did a bit, but Bret told me later he wanted to make sure he finished it, so his grandfather didn't attempt it himself. Which he certainly would have.



The girls spent much of the day playing with the hammock, pushing each other in it, sitting in it together, and arguing over who spent more time in it. I was glad the day stayed sunny so they could spend the day exploring and getting comfortable with their surroundings.

Since the weather was agreeable, we were able to cook our meal outside. Just hot dogs, but this time is wasn't so swampy, so the girls could help. Then we roasted marshmallows again, but outside around the campfire. Everyone loved it, and I could see GG and Grumpy were very pleased to have the next generation begin their memories around the campfire.

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