Cookout

Mr. Diligence wanted to have a cookout down by the river for his birthday, and invite some friends. We decided to have it for Sunday dinner a few days before his birthday, and invite everyone from church plus a few other friends. I think we ended up with a total of 36 people! We spent all afternoon there, roasting sausages for lunch and eating them along with many other treats that people brought. The children played in the creek all afternoon, and we all went home sunburned and tired, but it was a great day!

I apologize for not posting last week. I sent my camera with Gayle when he went to the States for his mother’s funeral, so wasn’t taking pictures. I was also away for four days, so didn’t have time to write anything anyway. Now, I need to buy a new camera, as mine got lost along the way somewhere. I’m thankful that Esther will loan me her camera!

Mr. Sweetie turned 10 yesterday. He wanted to celebrate with a fire down at the river, and roast sausages and marshmallows. We invited some friends to join us, but because of an emergency on their part, we ended up just having our family. We weren’t sure we could even do it, though, until the last minute, because it’s been rainy all week and was threatening this morning. About 11:30, Gayle and the boys decided to give it a try, and went down to the riverbed to start a fire. We’ve just gotten back, at 2:00 pm, and it’s still not raining—we got away with it this time!

I didn’t get any pictures while we were roasting our sausages. Once we were finished with them and the children had started roasting marshmallows, I remembered I had a camera! The marshmallow roasting was the amusing part, anyway. One boy declared that he couldn’t catch his marshmallow on fire. He roasted them slowly and perfectly. The next thing we knew, his marshmallow was on fire! He did do one perfectly for me. Another boy deliberately caught every one of his on fire. He’s too impatient to do them slowly.

Miss Joy seemed to enjoy her first cookout. She looked around, and slept for five minutes, and looked around some more.

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Mr. Imagination charred his marshmallow, then worked at picking the charcoal off.

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Several people put roasted marshmallows on top of their chocolate cupcakes.

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Despite the early-spring chill, Mr. Diligence wanted to go swimming. He put on his togs and leaped into the creek—and came right back out again, shivering!

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Several of the boys went up the creek with their sausage sticks to try to spear eels. They didn’t get any.

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The last step before leaving was to douse the fire, which these two did, gleefully!

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Cookout!

Birthday Cookout