Someone's Name Is MUD!

(Note: I used to scrapbook. It took a lot of time and I finally gave it up when Austin was born. I've decided to put some of the old scrapbook stories here to keep them all together. So, some of the photos might be cropped in weird shapes, which I really regret now. Also, I might get lazy and just scan some of the scrapbook pages. We'll see how it goes. Here is one of my favorite stories, I'll just scan a couple of the photos.)

In July of 1999, we went on our somewhat annual trip to Bonners Ferry, Idaho, to see my relatives on my mom's side. Bonners Ferry is a beautiful little town, about as far north as you can get in Idaho, so we usually make a trip up to Canada while we are there. This time, Morgan was playing with my cousin Ben's daughter, Audrey, and didn't want to go with us. Tanya, Ben's wife, said Morgan could stay with them for a few hours while we took Ally with us. I was a little concerned about this because Morgan could be quite a handful, but Tanya assured me she would be fine. Little did I know then that Ben and Tanya's kids were every bit as lively as mine are.

We only stayed in Canada for about an hour or so because Ally was asleep so we didn't do much more than buy our usual candy bars and then head home. We were about a block away from Tanya and Ben's house when I saw the strangest thing. It looked like some animals that I had never seen before, running down the road. They looked a lot like two-legged doberman dogs. When we got closer I realized that they weren't animals at all, but little naked black kids running down the road. I couldn't imagine what kind of a mother would let her little kids run down the road like that, without a stitch of clothing on. When we got closer still I realized that they weren't black kids at all, but little white kids covered all over with wet, black mud. And, one of them had a long, blond ponytail that was starting to look very familiar!

(This was after they'd dried off a bit. When I saw them at first they were the dark, shiny color of the wet mud, all over. Also, I couldn't see their faces because they were running away from us, the same direction as the car was going.)

According to Morgan, they had decided to play "piggies" in the garden while Tanya was watering. They were starting to get so dirty that she made them strip off their clothes so they wouldn't get stained. We thought they could just run through the sprinkler and the mud would wash right off, but the water was cold and there was just not enough pressure. They just got little clean stripes on their backsides.

We finally hosed them off, kicking and screaming, then transferred them into the laundry sink for the second round. Then they were finally clean enough to go into the house to the real bathtub, where we tried (in vain) to scrub the last bits of mud out of their noses and ears. Morgan ended up with a nasty rash that lasted for a while.