Recently I posted about a Scout campout we took at Camp Floyd. Well I finally downloaded the pictures I took on that campout from my digital camera. In the middle of the State Park there is this great grand tree that reminded me of the womping willow in the Harry Potter book series. I thought this tree looked so large and grand. If it could tell us its history what stories would it tell. This tree was on the pony express trail and across the street from Camp Floyd that housed approx. 4,000 US troops before the Civil War. One of the Scouts (not one of ours) started to try to climb the tree, but was soon stopped by the camp director. He was told that this is an old tree and not to harm it. After this incident I went over to the tree and found this plate on the side of the tree. If you zoom in onto the picture below you will see that this tree was planted in 1858. I'm impressed that this tree survived so long in an area where there is not much wood.
Yesterday, Cassie came to work with me. It turned out to be a horrible day for me. I'm in charge of email at my company and email was stuck somewhere in our system and it was taking a while to find where. When we would get one issue resolved it seemed another cropped up. I had a great day planned for Cassie. I was going to play soccer as well at lunch and introduce her to my soccer friends. Nothing went as planned yesterday and there was a time I got quite upset with the vendor I was working with. I couldn't get any DVD movie my daughter brought with her to run on the corporate imaged standard OS. I've played them before but yesterday it would not co-operate. I hope I haven't dashed my daughter's psychy forever so she won't be excited to come to me work. I didn't even get to take her to my scheduled meetings things were that bad. Her mom ended up coming to get her and I stayed at work until 7:30 pm....not a fun day yesterday. I apologized to her when I got home but I'm feeling like the damage is already done.
This evening only McKay and I were at home for a period of time or so it seemed. McKay came up to me and asked me to help him get some German Chocolate that his Oma brought back with her from her recent trip to Germany. Well, that wasn't an option so McKay disappeared for a moment and came to me holding one my favorite comfort foods....dark chocolate M&M's. I like the peanut butter ones, the almond and peanut, plain, and seasonal mint ones...well I pretty much like them all. I don't feel as guilty about eating M&M's when they are the dark chocolate kind. So while I was trying to open the bag of chocolates for McKay I told him I remember when there weren't so many different colored M&Ms in a bag. When I was a kid the red ones were removed because people thought the dye, used to make the color red, was bad for children. My mom used to quote these red color dye numbers to me while I was young and said that they made me hyperactive. This was the 70's version of A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder). I googled it and found that the red was pulled from M&M bags in 1976. Orange replaced the color red that year. I remember red was re-introduced when the red dye scare passed away. With the return of the color red, Mars candy kept the color orange. I also remember there used to not be the color blue in a bag of M&M's either. Blue replaced the light brown (tan) color that used to be in a bag of M&Ms. Now you can get M&M in pretty much any color. There are seasonal M&Ms that keep you going as well. I really think the mint M&Ms at Christmas taste best when they are either red or green in color. Speaking of green when I went to college, green M&Ms were said to have romantic powers. I remember people giving green M&Ms as they asked out their dates. 
