AJ saved the day for me again yesterday.  The scouts are planning a backpacking trip, and wanted to do a practise hike.  Which all sounds good in theory, until they realize that the adult leaders are all booked up for the weekend.  That left the 'moms' to fill in.  The boys were just hiking up to Whiskeytown Falls, so I said I could go with them, it isn't that hard a hike, but it would give them a chance to try out their backpacks.  The reality?  The boys that needed the practice didn't bring their full on backpacks, and the other Mom that volunteered had problems with the hike.  Luckily, AJ had gone with me, so he could be the second adult that's required.  We still had to hike very slowly, and the boys were eaten up by mosquitoes all they times that they had to stop and wait for 'us' (I was with the slower boys - and we eventually stripped them of their backpacks so they could make it up the trail.  We probably should have made them hike it with the packs, but......I was out of patience - and blood!)  

Other than having to hike with the whiny ("I can't make it, can't we just go back??"  "I need to eat my energy bar now." (less than a quarter mile into the trip) "Can we stop for more water?" 0 "Can we just stop here and wait for them to come back?") boys, it was a good hike.  The other Mom was able to eventually make it up the trail to the falls.  She had stopped partway up and decided she was just going to wait there until she felt better and then would try to come up, or just meet us back at the cars.  Needless to say, her son was one that wanted to go back.....We left at 8:00 a.m. so it was nice and cool (unfortunately, the aforementioned mosquitoes were out at that time of day.  They were pretty much gone by the time we went back down.)  Once we got the boys to the top of the hike - to the actual falls, they had a good time.  We got back around 11:30, and then I went shopping, etc.  My ankle ached the rest of the day, so I eventually took a quick nap before dinner (which didn't help my ankle, but I felt better!)  Luckily, my ankle doesn't hurt (much) today.  I was a little worried!  AJ has a shopping trip scheduled today - oh boy!

Book club was last week, and I forgot to take pictures of the bookmarks after I had them done.  I had two left, so here are the book bookmarks for The Book Thief.  Our next book is In the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes.

Today....I HAVE to finish the quilt.  The wedding is next weekend!  I worked on the toy for Elora last night for a bit.  I'm not as worried about that - I'll mail it up to her, and she won't know that it was late for her birthday.  I can get by with that with her for a couple more years......then she'll start to notice that I'm always late.