Reunion. Sort of.

Hi folks.

We're only entering the second official week of Summer, and so far it's been pretty crazy around these parts.  School wrapping up, settling into a new house, dealing with graduating girls scouts and birthday parties, surviving floods, and teaching at Delta.

And that was only Week One.

Sanford Community of Christ Campgrounds

Week Two, all things considered, was hopefully going to be much, much quieter for the Houghs.  I was planning on teaching my second week-long class at Delta (this time Illustration and Storytelling), and since Kris works during the summer (unlike other, more fortunate individuals), we needed someone to watch the girls.  Last week, we didn't have to:  Kris took a few days off to unpack and continue moving into the new house, and Mom watched them on the days she worked.  For this week, in order to avoid paying out the ass for the girls to attend the Midland Community Center for daycare while we were at work, Mom offered to take them with her up to the Sanford Community of Christ Campgrounds.

I know you've heard me talk about this before, so I'll keep it brief:  I was practically raised on these campgrounds.  Every summer, since I was born, was spent on these hallowed grounds.  I attended summer camps there from elementary school to high school, and during college I returned to become a camp counselor and later an Assistant Director, leading my own youth camps.  In addition to camps, I would accompany my family to the large, community-based Reunions where families across the state would throw up RVs, campers, and tents and hang out together.

I personally haven't attended a Reunion since I was 16, but now that we're home for good, that might be something we end up doing in the near future.  For now, though, we welcomed the idea of introducing Sanford to the girls on a short-term basis:  Mom was going to keep them up there for about five days in her camper, which was pretty doable for our kids.

By the end of the week, the girls reported that they had a great time, and Mom assured us that they had behaved themselves (for the most part.)  While unpacking their things, we stumbled across their cameras, and found a treasure trove of pictures they had taken during their stay.

Check it out:

Usually, in years past, Mom would always set up her camper behind and to the right of this old shower house.  This was impossible this year, though, on account of the recent flooding, so Mom relocated nearer to the Dining Hall, in view of Sanford Lake - a lot like where Granny and Grandpa Hough used to park their airstream trailer.

Dropping off two kids and a bunch of crap to Grandma

Establishing headquarters

Setting off to check out the surroundings and introduce the girls to the campgrounds

The main shower house (I remember the hill being a lot taller, but whatever.)

Unsurprisingly, this old favorite would prove to be the girls' hang out spot of choice in the evenings.

Lakefront

The Dining Hall - FYI, it smells exactly as you remember it

The side of the Dining Hall, and the Bell

The Boy's Bathroom, on the 'camp' side of the campground.  I've scrubbed these sinks and floors (and toilets) more than I'd like to recall.

The Tabernacle.  You can still see leftover remnants of Sanford's flooding, some days later.

Some quonset huts (C is no more, but A and B still stand.)

(Growing up, the hot girls always stayed in Cabin B.)

The ol' swimmin' hole, where I spent many a summer in my youth slingin' mud back and forth with other kids (Alayna actually had her Blessing here, too, back in 2009.)

Walkin' the trail back from the swimming area, back up towards the quonset huts. . .

I'm pretty sure these are the same canoes that were here back in the '80s.  Not sure how safe that is.

Fun Hough Fact:  I broke up with my first girlfriend on this back porch.  She didn't take it well (but who could blame her, am I right?)

The Youth Building, sometimes referred to as 'Cabin E' during larger youth camps. The smaller room on the far side was my home away from home, though:  Cabin D.

The Point, the location of nightly campfires (and, coincidentally, Grandpa Hough's ashes.)

And now, for some of the girls' many pictures from the week, after Kris and I drove back to Midland.  Believe it or not, what follows are some of the better ones we found on their cameras - I'm going to have to work with them on their photography skills. . .

In Grandma's camper

The Tabernacle

Not happy

Clearly paying attention in a morning devotional

Local friends.  I guess mom's camper quickly became a hangout spot for roaming kids.

(I really hope that's not beer. . .)

I always thought selfies like this were a few years off. . . oh well.

. . . aaaaaaaand here's a giant stick in the shape of a wishbone.  'Cause why not.

- Brian

Pirates?! Pssh...

you know, at first i thought this whole somali pirate craze thing was kinda cool. i mean, pirates? in the 21st century? attacking merchant ships on the high seas? peril?!

yeah... i found this considerably awesome.

this, of course, is coming from a kid who's childhood vocational dream was to be come a pirate himself (after realizing that there was practically a 0% chance i was ever going to learn the ways of the force and own my own lightsaber).

i was obsessed with pirates growing up, and, like most other kids, couldn't shake the romantic view of pirates that hollywood and popular culture has capitalized on over the course of the last hundred years or so. keep in mind that this was way before that whole johnny depp franchise came along, too... had i been still a kid when those movies came out, there's a solid chance i'd be cruising around in a fishing boat in the indian ocean today carrying an AK-47 and flying a jolly roger.

but let's not kid ourselves, folks...

pirates, as probably most of you are aware of, are not nearly as awesome as we make them out to be. very few pirates - bartholemew roberts and edward teach (blackbeard) being the exception here - ever tooled around in large, man-of-war, galleons the type of which are considered the pirate standard in the pirates of the caribbean franchise. and pirates usually didn't steal gold, or spanish dubloons, or any other type of treasure from their captured prizes - nine times out of ten, they were gunning for spare sails and rope, food and medical supplies, ship hardware, and, of course, casks of rum.

but let me stop right there for a sec - i realize that i'm beginning to transform into mr. hough... giving all you folks a lecture in blog-form. not my intention. nay, readers - my reason for writing about pirates this morning is to simply state my opinion on the whole, on-going fiasco happening today with these somalian pirates.

since the somalian government collapsed in the early 1990s, the country's become a safe-haven for pirates. no order, no stability, no peace = pirate heaven. now, for whatever reason, the global community - with all its naval firepower, state-of-the-art intelligence and global positioning equipment, financial capital, etc. - simply cannot stop a handful of half-starved somalians from putting along in their rusty fishing boats with outdated russian-issued no idea. these guys are just way too damn much for the likes of us.

...are you kidding me?!

this crap is ridiculous, ands its pretty much gotten to the point now where if countries are going to consistently act like morons when dealing with this threat, than they deserve to be hijacked and plundered. that's the price for being an idiot, guys. quit whining.

me? i'd take a lesson from the annals of history (another reason why i teach social studies). before getting his ass handed to him by julius ceasar, co-consul of rome pompey magnus was - and is still considered today -the greatest pirate hunter of all time. he single-handedly wiped out piracy in the mediterranean sea, creating a 'roman lake,' around which the entire empire spread out. and the funny thing about this is that he did it rather easily - it wasn't a brilliant plan by any means, it only took a matter of months, and, for the life of me, i can't understand why the hell we're not doing this right now.

here's how it works:

1. create huge bounties on pirate leaders, and offer rewards for captured pirates

2. bribe major pirate leaders to take down fellow pirates

3. blockade pirate safe havens and raid strongholds(what's up, somalia?!)

4. increase naval supremacy in the region and take no prisoners when encountering pirates

5. execute everybody you can get your damn hands on

that's it. that's how we solve the pirate dilemma in the indian ocean. the pirates of tunisia and algiers in the last century B.C. were a hell of a lot more sophisticated and organized than today's rag-tag assortment of hoopleheads, and they were vanquished with little or no technological support. i see no excuse for the global community's complete and utter lack of smartness.

in closing, i hope you all thoroughly enjoyed your lesson today - your homework assignment is to do the section assessment on page 297, questions 1 - 7. have it to me by monday.

- mr. hough