Princess Campout with Horses

Busy weekend! I ditched work a little early to get Acacia right after school and go see the new Harry Potter movie -- she had her heart set on seeing it the first day. We both really liked it.

Then we went down to the campout, arriving pretty late. But fortunately, we didn't have to set up the tent in the dark, 'cuz Acacia stayed with a friend ("camping sleepover!") and I went home to bed so I could get up early enough to go to a required Living Trust seminar on Saturday morning. After that, back down to the campout to have dinner and play at the Nation Campfire.

Which went *really* well. An unforeseen consequence of my distributing "Waltzing with Bears" CDs to essentially the whole nation is that my campfire audience suddenly has an intimate knowledge of not only the songs in my repertoire, but the full lyrics thereof. When the chief calls me up to play a song, there's a pitched battle of girls calling for their favorites. "Lollipop Tree" is a big favorite these days 'cuz they all like the part where I pretend to cry.

When I got to, inevitably, "Bears" itself, I asked if anybody knew the words, and got almost universal affirmative screaming in return. So I asked 'em to come on down and sing it with me. Fortunately, there was a pretty big stage area, 'cuz I got about 50 little girls -- and it was a ball. They were singing out, having big fun, and the dads were enjoying it, too. A lot of guys told me afterward that that was a great idea.

Sunday morning's assembly was similar. I did "The Marvelous Toy", with a lot of in-seat participation, and the dads got it in their heads to do "the wave", several times, while I was singing. Took some concentration not to lose my place with that going on out there. Later, before "The Indian Princess Song", when I repeated my plea for somebody to step up to take over the guitar playing for next year, when I'll be (supposedly) graduated out, up went a chant for "One more year! One more year!".

Flattering. And, truth be told, what with Trailmates continuing to be the bust that it is, I'm tempted. Acacia seems to be amenable, Allen and Meagan seem to want to do another year, and maybe we can talk Todd and Arielle into it... We'll see.

Anyway, after all that, Kevin (who in the Marine reserves) took a few of us who could make it to the stables on Camp Pendelton for an hour-long ride. It goes without saying that Acacia loved that part.