Thanksgiving Adventure: Friday

Jerome and I must have slept a good 12 hours, since we'd gone to bed so early the night before. It was a lot colder than I was used to! I liked it, though. Maybe it sounds strange to say, but it was the kind of cold that made me feel glad to be alive. Well, glad to have a big yellow sweater, a warm hat and gloves and a good campfire to keep warm by, anyway. =P

Sometime after breakfast, Jerome and I went to help Alan and Julian find firewood while Chantal stayed behind and made everyone sandwiches for a picnic on our next kayaking adventure. She made mine with some leftover bean loaf from my family's dinner, which my mom had packed for me. ^,^ We left Fish Eating Creek and went pretty much across the street, to find wood in the wild. What I didn't know is that we were also going to do a little off-roading along the way.

Now, I've gone off-roading with Jerome lots of times on ATVs (All Terrain Vehicles), but I'd never done it in their big yellow Jeep before. I kind of think I prefer it, actually. It was like being on a roller coaster, bumping along and seeing mud splash all around us without getting dirty yourself. So much fun! I remember hearing ACDC on the radio, singing "It's a Long Way to the Top If You Want to Rock and Roll" the whole time, and it was the perfect soundtrack! Funny enough, as soon as we quit off-roading, that's when the song ended.

Anyway, we collected a good deal of firewood, plus Julian spotted a couple of grapefruit trees as we drove through the woods, so he climbed up and threw down several yellow grapefruits. I think they weren't quite ripe, but it was still cool. Picking fruit fresh from the trees is the best.

We got back to the camp and it was basically the same deal as the previous day, where we went to the creek to go rowing, except we went in the opposite direction, upstream. We knew it would be tough rowing initially, but the way back downstream would be so much easier. Actually, I didn't even row that much upstream, because one of my shoulders was aching a bit. Must have overworked it, or slept funny the previous night. So Chantal did the rowing in the front of the canoe and I got to be the passenger in the middle, nibbling on a bag of grapes I'd brought along for the trip and enjoying the view.

Such as this view of Jerome, with Dad Alan in the back. ^,^

Not to say that I didn't do any rowing that day. I did. We took a break in the middle and switched things around, so Chantal could get a chance in one of the kayaks and Alan was the passenger. He's kind of a big guy, and we also were lugging the cooler, so it was a little tiring. :P

In the end though, we made it to one of the Ginori's favorite beaches, we ate our sandwiches and we played with the Frisbee I'd brought.

There was this one time where I threw it and the wind made the frisbee land in the water by accident. It was still kind of cold, and it was quite far out in the middle. I was worried the water was too cold for anyone to go in and get it, but my sweet bofriend Jerome got to be the hero and swam to rescue it, braving the freezing water for me. ^,^

We had a lot of fun on our little private beach until it felt like time to head back.  Julian went in the front of the canoe and rowed super fast, especially since we were going downstream! That guy sure is full of energy.

Chantal riding in Julian's kayak. I was so excited to get this shot! Look at the water splashing like that! It's looks like it's frozen! ^_^ (Well, it kinda is frozen, since it's a picture... Lol)

When we got back to the shore, Jerome and I took another walk with his brother, who teased us that he felt like a third wheel. Jules said he understood now how Jerome must have felt when he'd had a girlfriend in high school years ago. 

We tried to see across to a field of  horses by climbing a tree, but we didn't see anything. Got good pics, though.

Hmm, what else? Well, while waiting for dinner to be ready, we taught Julian how to play Cards Against Humanity, which he'd never played before and he found it pretty funny. It's not that fun with only 3 people, but I'm glad he liked it. Oh, I remember he showed us the new Star Wars trailer on his phone. MAN, I can't believe how much the Internet has blown up about that in just a few days. XD

Dinner was basically leftovers of Thanksgiving food, plus a nice  potato+tomatoe+onion+mushroom dish wrapped in foil and heated over the fire. Jerome and I did the dishes again, plus while we were at it we went to the store to get some eggs and a jug of water, since we were running out. Close by the store, we saw there was a karaoke event going on. I thought that was so cool, because I love doing karaoke. I asked Jerome if we could go later, and he said sure.

We came back to camp and Julian threw in this interesting powder that he'd bought at the store earlier that makes the campfire burn different colored flames. It made such an awesome display, glowing green and blue! It's like how I imagine the magical flames Hermione's makes in the Harry Potter books.

We all realized too late that we should have made s'mores before coloring the fire. :P... Ah, but we made s'mores anyway, just trying our best to avoid the colorful flames, since we were paranoid. Jerome and I invited the others to join us for karaoke, but no one else seemed interested. I signed myself up for a song, but it took f   o   r   e   v   e   r for it to be my turn, like over an hour and a half, maybe even 2 hours! At last I sang I'm a believer, Smash Mouth version. I imagined myself singing like Donkey from Shrek.

We heard someone sing Bohemian Rhapsody afterwards, and then left the karaoke place. I found a flashlight in the process, so I guess that was cool. When we came back, the rest of Jerome's family was asleep. It must have been well past 10 when Jerome and I went to bed ourselves. (Haha, looks like we stayed up a lot later than them that time.)

Wow, halfway through this epic now. Sorry for this post coming a tad late. Today was pretty busy. I also saw the South Park episode tonight that was supposed to have Pewdiepie in it, but he was really in it the first few minutes, so that was kinda disappointing. Plus it's a two-parter story...

Well, good night then. Look forward to my next post, about last Saturday. That was my absolute favorite day, and you'll soon discover way!