Getting ready for Stauffer Camping

I woke up before 5:00 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep.  Second morning in a row, ugh!!  But I did have a reward when I finally gave up and came out to the kitchen for my first cup of coffee.  A sunrise!  Hadn't seen one of those for a while because they're so crazy early these days.

Ever since my last post on Saturday I have been pretty much preparing for this upcoming weekend - the annual Stauffer Camping with Dick's family.  This year it is our turn to be in charge of the Sunday morning worship.  So last Saturday I worked on that, deciding on the songs we will sing, making copies for everyone, and making sure I had someone lined up to do something with the kids while we adults have sharing time around the fire.  

On Sunday afternoon Dick brought our little pop-up camper home from storage and we had a horrible surprise.  Despite the bars of Irish Spring soap we had put in it to chase the mice away, we discovered that mice had actually eaten the soap and partied in our camper all winter.  What a MESS!!  So we spent the rest of Sunday scrubbing, vacuuming (with a shop vac - didn't want that stuff in my good vacuum cleaner), and laundering everything. 

But alas, when I went into the camper on Monday morning it still reeked of mouse odor.  So I did a search on Amazon and ordered OdoBan, which was Amazon's choice.  Then I needed to email our niece Laura about something else and mentioned our mouse issue.  She called and told me about a product, ClenAir, which her husband's company uses and can also be purchased from Amazon.  She said they have used it with great success.  So I ordered that too. 

Both products arrived already on Tuesday.  I put the ClenAir odor neutralizer in the camper at 11 AM, and when I came home at 3:00 in the afternoon I couldn't smell any mouse odor at all!!  I couldn't believe it!  However, on Wednesday morning, after everything had been closed up and the sun was hot, I walked into the camper and there was still a faint mouse odor.  So I opened up the box of OdoBan products and put that odor neutralizer in the camper too.  Last evening I again vacuumed everything with my good vacuum cleaner and sprayed the disinfectant on all the upholstery and canvas walls.  I went out there this morning, and it smells fresh and clean.   I know one thing, that camper is cleaner than it's ever been since we own it!  And it won't stay that way long!

Other things I've done this week were lots of shopping for camping food and supplies, planning, writing.  Austin has an all-day Ninja camp this week at a new facility a few miles from our house.  So pretty much each day I've been picking him up at 5, then picking Hunter up from daycare and taking them home along with any food I prepared for them.  

On Tuesday evening Dick was going to be grilling the breakfast sausages for Saturday morning at camp.  (We'll have 30-some people to feed, and Saturday breakfast will be our responsibility.  We've found it to be easier to make the sausages ahead of time and reheat them in a pot over the fire, so we can just concentrate on making the pancakes.)  Before he got started he decided to bring our three cooler chests into the house, and in the process of trying to carry two of them at the same time he started to lose his balance and jammed his hand against the edge of our front door.  He heard something crack, and his ring finger was sticking off at an angle.  So it was the ER all evening instead of grilling sausages.  He came home much later with a splint and a hand specialist's name to contact.  He just saw the hand specialist this morning and will have a more stabilizing splint.  Thankfully he will not need surgery.  Whew!!  

So on Wednesday I did all those sausages on the electric griddle instead - 162 of them!!  Stauffers, you can eat plenty of sausages!

This morning I made this delicious blueberry sauce that I make each year.  I tripled the recipe.  Sometimes when I don't feel like looking for a recipe that I may have printed out before, it's just easier to look it up online on my phone and take a screenshot of it.

So that's all for this time, believe it or not!  I'll post sometime next week with plenty of stories and pictures.