July 17, 2026 - Friday

I'm just an emotional rollercoaster today. One minute I'm Miss Congeniality and the next I'm Medusa. Thanks hormones!!! It's a mess. It's also still incredibly hot. ALSO, the air quality is supposed to be terrible today and nobody is supposed to spend prolonged time outside. Kind of an impossibility when you're camping! I mean, I guess we could ignore our entire family and sit inside all day, but that would be ridiculous. 

There has been a lot of drama about the Cherrystone dates for next year. So. The sites we want are not available for this same week next year. Or really, any convenient week. There is one week in June, when Clem (and maybe Ruby) will be gone at Blowout camp and then there's a week in August. I was talking to Kelly and asked her about her date preferences and she said she didn't want to go in August because it'll be too hot. So, basically, she was saying that she'd rather go in June, even though it means we can't go. I wasn't shocked. We've been left out of this trip because people don't want to change dates so many times that it doesn't surprise me anymore. What did surprise me was MJ and dad's anger over it. MJ said if we weren't going, she and dad aren't going to go. I'm assuming word got around about that because the dates were back up in the air for a while. It's one thing to exclude the Boettchers, but an entirely different thing to make it so dad and MJ can't go. 

I wrote the first half of this blog post in the morning. Update: we did not sit inside all day. I tried really hard to be chipper! Evie got here around 4, which was cool. I didn't get much of a chance to hang out with her and JJ, but we tried. We had another big, family dinner tonight. Lots of delicious food! I brought Tasha's mac that she left in my fridge and spiced it up a little. It needed some work, but turned out pretty good! We also decided on dates for next year. We're moving spots so that we can all come and be together during a week that we're all available. Nobody is happy about the move, but we all feel like it's better to move and to be together than to be in the same spot, but some of us not show up. There was karaoke tonight and the Bowmans always show up BIG! Lots and lots of Bowmans up there singing and dancing. It was a really good, hot, sweaty time!

I feel like tomorrow is just going to be all about packing. I'm pretty ready to get out of here. Eight days might be a little too long for me. When the heat hit a couple of days ago, I put my camera away and never got it back out. The life has been sapped out of me! That, and the fact that my period is in a couple of days and my hormones are RAGING. Barely got any pictures again today. This will make for a very sad photo book!