April Picnic

This past Sunday Jan and I decided to pry ourselves from the couch and go out to join several of our kids and grandkids for a picnic out at Long Island. The weather was uncommonly warm and sunny that day and it was nice to get out and enjoy the sunshine. Jennifer and her family are regular visitors to this sand spit and by the time we arrived on the scene, Ben had a fire going and all the food was layed out on a blanket. That's just the way I like it. I show up just in time to eat and have fun and leave before the mess needs to be cleaned up. Jen is the master weenie- roaster today. She wisely chose to purchase a commercial hot dog roasting implement for just such occasions. It has a long steel rod with two spears on the one end and a wooden handle on the other. While it's better than most sticks that I've used, I think it should be more solidly built- perhaps out of stainless steel and another foot longer with an insulated glove built into the handle so you don't have to worry about roasting both your fingers and the weenies at the same time. Several years ago Jen provided us with a great deal of entertainment when she was roastin hot dogs out at False Bay. She was using a stick at the time and the weenie was just about to the point of perfection when the end of the stick burned off and it fell into the fire. Undaunted, she speared another one and proceeded to do the same thing again. Someone finally had pity on her and took over the cooking duties. We had to- there was only two packages of hot dogs and the way she was going we would have had to excavate our meal from the ashes if she was left in charge. In the bottom picture, if you look closely near her knee, you can see the dusty remains of what was supposed to be a picnic delight. She claims that she didn't drop it, but I'm not really convinced.

While writing about this picnic I'm reminded of another one a few years back- I think it was on Memorial Day. We went back out to False Bay with Jen's family and the pastor of the Assembly of God church with his family. He had a little white and brown Jack Russell terrier named Izzy, a spastic little thing that had a nasty habit of finding anything disgusting in the yard and rolling in it.
It just so happened that the dog had been given a bath prior to going with the family on the picnic. When the pastor opened the car door the dog ran out, found an enormous pile of bear crap and proceeded to roll in it. While that was funny enough on it's own, what really cracked me up was when he exclaimed, "Izzy! Look at you! You've gone and stained yourself!" Then he proceeded to put the dog back in the car. I question the wisdom of that, but I wasn't riding with him so I guess it didn't matter. Anyway, regardless of bear droppings or stinky dogs, burned weenies or bugs, picnics are a lot of fun and I should strive to attend more of them.