Jason and I decided to go to Saguaro Lake and have a picnic for Labor day.  I packed up the cooler with sandwiches, boiled eggs, grapes,  and sodas, suck an old table cloth in a paper bag with the Pringles and paper plates & towels, loaded the children into the car and we were off.....almost

Jason noticed that one of the tires on his car was flat & wanted to change it in the hope that he would be able to have it repaired. So after a slight delay we really were off.

We drove to the lake and got everything unloaded. I spread the table cloth and handed out food. Kate and Luther didn't want to eat, so they were just going to have sodas. They opened the cans and then we had bees. Not cute fuzzy bumble bees.....we had aggressive africanized bees everywhere! I took stock of the situation, and moved Luther's bee infested soda a little way away thinking that it would keep the bees happy and they'd ignore us. At the same time I decided the perhaps the flowered  vinyl table cloth was a poor choice, so I flipped it over to the white fuzzy side.

While I was dealing with the bees,  Jason took the children to change into their swimming suits. Luther was elated when they returned, "Guess what Mom?!?! We saw a girl getting arrested!" Oh, my.....

We still had lots of nasty bees, so we decided to walk to the lake shore. I was blessed with a grandmother who had a lakeside cabin in Minnesota where I got to spend my summers as a child. Now that is what a lake should be-spring-fed crystal clear and sky blue. In Arizona, we have glorified mud puddles: large, but still just a mud puddle. I was standing ankle-deep in the "lake" and I couldn't see my feet because the water was that muddy. EW!

So after about 5 minutes of that Luther says, "I want to go home!" Jason and I seized this moment and had everything back in the van in under ten minutes.

As we were driving home, Jason pulled over to let a police car pass-it was going really fast. And a few miles down the road we see the same car with a cop squatting behind the door, his gun pointed at a young man who had his hands behind his head. Not 50 feet farther down the road was another car pulled over, the driver and passengers all standing with their hands on the car, and another policeman with his gun drawn.

We made it home, filled up the wading pool and barbecued hot dogs....I think next time I suggest a picnic, we'll just have it in our back yard.