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Momservation: Trying to protect your kids from the truth is like leaving the liquor cabinet unlocked – if you think they won’t find out you must like watered down Vodka.

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Funny thing happened on the way to a memorable camping trip this summer.

It involved lying, garbage (which heretofore will be known as “bear smorgasbord”), grown adults afraid to unzip a tent, and a bear.

Here’s the story: It was the first night of our annual seven-family camping trip in the El Dorado National Forest. With kids ranging in age from 4 to 9, we all retired to our respective tents smug in the knowledge that after doing this for numerous years, we had this camping thing DOWN.

Kids went down easy after a day by the lake and a night of s’mores and kern around the fire. Parents enjoyed some adult time with adult beverages before loading the coolers in the car and food in the bear lockers. Flashlights were in place for any midnight nature calls and everyone was snuggled warmly in their sleeping bags prepared for the elements.

At 4:30 in the morning our one major mistake would become alarmingly obvious.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

In case you don’t recognize the sound, that would be the sleep jolting racket of a 250 pound black bear 40 feet away from your tent trying to break into the bear locker for your freshly made zucchini bread.

All the tents in our multi-family campsite lit up with fearful whispers. “Bear!” Despite the echoing clanging of the bear’s futile attempts, only one child woke up – my son Logan.

We strained our ears, too frozen in shock to unzip the tent, listening to hear if the bear would give up and move on. Logan repeatedly whispered with an equal measure of curiosity and nervousness, “Is it a raccoon?”

Not wanting to frighten him nor start our day in the 4 o’clock hour with a petrified nine year-old too afraid of falling back asleep Hubby and I said in unison, “Yeah. It’s a raccoon.”

But we never unzipped the tent to confirm it. We didn’t need to. Because soon there was the unmistakable sound telling us this bear was not moving on. It was clanking glass, crunched soda cans, crinkling wrappers and munched plastic cups. It was a bear smorgasbord. We had forgotten to properly dispose of the garbage.

“Someone left the garbage out!” I hissed stating the obvious.

“I looked for it hanging from the tree, but I didn’t see it.” Hubby said, then realized, “I must not have seen it in the dark because it was a black trash bag.”

A loud whisper came from the tent next door, but no sounds of an unzipping tent. “What should we do?”

“Hit the car alarm?” Hubby guessed.

“No! I don’t want to agitate it!” I said.

“You got your light?” the next-door voice asked. Hubby had brought a 2,000 candle-watt powered flashlight that could probably guide in a small airplane.

“Yeah. Let’s hit it with the lights,” directed Hubby. We all waited for the sound of the first unzipped tent. After a long pause, I dove forward and unzipped the tent ending the game of chicken. Peeking out into the pitch black, all I could make out was a large shadow darker than the night.

“Alright - Go!” someone said. As the lights flooded the campground I expected to see a bear frozen in our headlights. But the lights did the trick. It scared him away before we could get a good glimpse.

Then Hubby stated, “Shoot. I gotta go pee.”

“Now?” I asked incredulously. I did too, but I’d pee my sleeping bag before I went out right after a bear sighting.

Hubby loudly whispered to the next tent, “Cover me Bob, I’m going pee!”

After making it safely back in with his flashlight as protection, Hubby and I assured Logan the “raccoon” was gone and to go back to sleep. After the adrenaline rush wore off, we all finally fell back asleep.

For forty-five minutes. That’s when we awakened to the rummaging of the diner back at the bear smorgasbord. I nudged Hubby and we both popped up to unzip the tent wanting a glimpse of the bear now that the twilight of morning would illuminate him.

As we did, Logan sat up asking, “Is that the raccoon? Is the raccoon back?”

We couldn’t answer him because both of us were frozen in awe tinged with fear that yes, indeed, that was a black bear – as if we expected to see something else.

Silently peeking out from the relative safety of our tent, we watched the bear wander around investigating our campsite only feet from us. “Is it the raccoon?” Logan asked again.

At this point I decided to let him in on the truth of the amazing spectacle, comfortable that with sleep behind us and in the dim light of the approaching morning it wouldn’t be so scary. I waved him over. “C’mere Logan. You gotta see this.”

A third head popped in between Hubby and me as we lay on our stomachs peering out the small opening on the bottom of our tent. Like three little Indians in a teepee we tracked the sound of the visitor in the murky light. The bear was briefly out of sight behind a car, then the bug tent. “Where is it? Where is it?” Logan impatiently whispered.

Finally, for a moment, it reappeared next to our campfire ring before leaving our site heading back into the creek from which it came.

With the bear gone I looked over at Logan to gauge his reaction, wondering if I needed to do damage control.

Still staring ahead, frozen in amazement of what his eyes had seen, he said very slowly and with the awe of someone flipping through the Guinness Book of World Records, “That was a big raccoon.”    

After a good laugh I realized it was time to drop the lie and trying to shelter my son’s world. I was sure if I kept the charade up I was doing more damage because the thought of a 250 pound, six foot long raccoon roaming the forest was probably a more frightening scenario than a bear.

Later, after giving the bear some time to move on, we excitedly checked out the bear signs left behind. A big, dusty paw print on the bear locker; chewed and slobbered Dixie cups; prints and snot on the hood of a car; and a black trash bag bear smorgasbord spread at the base of a tree.

We promptly switched to white garbage bags.

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Momservation: Why isn’t the healing of sick children in doctor’s office waiting rooms modern miracles?

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You would never guess my daughter, Whitney, broke her arm five weeks ago.

Beyond the moment after first walking up to me, not a tear in her eye, clutching an Icee in one hand and holding up her other to tell me she thought she just broke her arm, the girl hasn’t let the minor inconvenience of a broken appendage ruin her summer.

The most she cried was not when the pain of her break hit her, but when the novelty of getting a cast wore off (in the doctor’s office waiting to get it put on). She realized all the water time she would likely miss – Daddy’s big pool party on 4^th of July with all her friends, water skiing at Shaver Lake, splashing, jumping and diving with her friends at the pool, and the effective end to her swim team season (though she was okay with that one).

When the cast was put on, the doctor told Whitney due to increased uncoordination because of the body’s energy being weighted to one side to heal itself she should refrain from, “Running, jumping and pivoting.”

Well, let’s see. The very next day we dropped her off at soccer camp. Does protecting the goal with a broken arm, scoring countless goals, leading the charge in an obstacle course race, and wielding her cast as a club threatening cone raiders with “I’m not afraid to use this thing!” considered running, jumping or pivoting?

She certainly didn’t run, jump or pivot when she turned herself into a human submarine, holding her blue-bagged cast aloft out the water like a periscope, refusing to be left out of any water fun.

There might have been some running, jumping and pivoting when Whitney won Camper of the Week at Buzzardball basketball camp, but I was too busy noticing she was only one of two girls showing the boys she still “got game” even with a broken arm.

She rode her scooter in the 4^th of July parade and did three-legged and sack races, she bowled, she miniature golfed, she danced and she fished. All free of running, jumping, pivoting I’m sure.

The most impressive though was when we went to Shaver Lake. First we let her go tubing behind the ski boat if she sat in the middle of the three-person, seated inflatable. Before long she was on the edge (for best weight distribution) riding that raft like a bucking bronco, taunting the water and daring the boat driver to tip her over. Not a run, jump or pivot in sight.

Since that went so well, we let her water ski off a boom. With her blue bag offering debatable water protection for her cast if she fell, she once again showed that nothing stops an eight year old girl with a broken arm. She didn’t fall and she didn’t run, jump or pivot.

Since Whitney was getting her cast off in only a few days, and we determined that the worst thing to happen if the cast got wet was the smell (which was already so bad, how could it smell worse?), we gave into one last request to test the limits to running, jumping and pivoting.

Along with a dozen other kids on the camping trip, she wanted to jump off a 20 foot rock into the lake. With a shrug we tightened up the blue bag around the cast and sent her on a running jump with a delightful little pivot for style into the lake with her friends.

Amazingly, Whitney’s arm had become so strong holding it aloft away from water for nearly five weeks, she plunged into the lake, arm stretched to the sky, and bobbed to the surface like a cork without ever submerging her casted arm.

So we let her do it two more times.

Today, in about an hour, we go to get off this cast that threatened, yet failed, to slow Whitney’s summer down. We will celebrate the healing of her arm and return to being a normal kid by going to Raging Waters where she can get every inch of her body wet in slippery, crazy, fun.

Unfortunately, there’s no running, jumping or pivoting allowed around the pool decks.

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Momservation: Interestingly enough, a great day jam packed full of fun will end up with your kids being an overtired, crying, quivering mess by bedtime.

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We are having so much fun over here at the Wheeler house this summer that it’s making us sick.

That’s right, run into the ground by non-stop, action packed days with no rest for the weary in between the next fun-filled event. By bedtime not only are my kids a crying, overtired, quivering mess, but so is Mommy. But then in the morning, instead of sleeping in and letting our bodies recover, we are jumping back up for the next scheduled, or even unscheduled, event.

Something had to give, but since we weren’t willing to say no to All-Star baseball or our annual 4^th of July/Daddy’s birthday party extravaganza, our health took one for the overextended Wheeler team.

But of course, a summer cold can’t keep a busy family down. We’ve got free movie Tuesdays and Fun Wednesdays to get to. We’ve got new 3D movies released that we need to see and friends at the swim club we need to splash and play with. There’s been Buzzardball and British soccer camps with Sac State soccer camp in the pipeline.

Who’s got time to sleep in when there’s camping trips that need to be packed for and the last days of training for a Tri-For-Fun Triathlon? I’ve got to get the sand out of the swimsuits from our trip to the beach and get the grass stains off the baseball uniform thanks to another win that has extended the season.

We’re not even half-way through our summer vacation yet and we’ve already packed enough fun into it for three summers worth. And that’s with aborting a swim team season due to broken appendage.

So as we momentarily sit here amidst a mound of discarded Kleenexes sucking on lozenges for our sore throats, I’m looking at my calendar. Birthday parties, rafting trip, Jelly-Belly factory tour, 20^th reunion, Hot August Nights and a day at Raging Waters to celebrate Whitney’s cast removal and getting to swim again – these are just the fun things written down.

I think it’s going to take the HINI virus to stop us.

Two days max though…