The Ninth Time Is The Charm...

Before we begin - a HUGE shout out to a long-time friend of Killer Fiction - Terri Osburn, who just made her FIRST SALE in a 3-BOOK DEAL to Montlake Publishing, Amazon.com!  Terri was a Golden Heart finalist this year and I was lucky enough to read the book before the Romance Writers of America conference - and it is a phenomenal book!  Yay Terri!!!

The 9th time is the charm.  I'm not sure that's really a thing...but this was the 9th Annual Labor Day Camping Trip with my Girl Scouts, and there are, for once, pictures of me.

Don't get me wrong - I don't usually like to be photographed.  And because I am the one taking all the pictures, I only appear in the customary group shot we do.  But this year, the girls swiped my camera on occasion, and these are the pictures they took:

 

 This is me standing on the dock, watching the girls canoe around the lake.  It's my job, for safety purposes, to keep an eye on everything from the land.  Of course, this doesn't take into account that I'd have to jump in with these 20lb. hiking shoes to rescue them if I had to - but I would...I think...yes...I probably would.

  

 This is me, blowing on the fire.  We try to use only one match when starting the fire - so a little hot air goes along way to maintain my pride in this area.  The bucket of water (again for safety) is rather unfortunately placed...

 

This is part of me - after hooking my daughter (smiling) up to the zip line.  The girls have been zipping for 6 years, and still forget all the work that goes into setting it up, sending the girls and taking everything down.  But, it's the roller coaster of camp - and you can hardly expect them to miss out on the roller coaster of camp, can you?

Our late night hay rack ride that we do the second night of camp.  The camp ranger - Mahlon - does a terrific job of scaring the hell out of us by driving fast through the trails with the lights off, going airborne off a small cliff, etc.  It is also known as the roller coaster of camp.  And this year, he offered to take a picture of us before we left.  If he'd taken one when we got back, we'd look disheveled and happily startled.  Actually, now that I think about it - he's smart to do it that way.  You can't have a picture of 8 girls and their leader, all hovering two feet off the hay bales after a particularly large bump, now can you?

So we survived another long weekend at camp.  And this year, there's actual proof I was there.

The Assassin