take it to the limit one more time...

Wow. there is so much to remember about the last couple days that i don't know if i can fit it all in. i don't think i actually have any memory of yesterday before bonnie's amazing cheesecake. there are so many hilarious moments that we have, i wish i could just write them all down the moment we have them so i'll remember. anyway, after the cheesecake we piled in the minivan--Fred, Charlotte, Sarah, Mick, Josh, Nhu, and I--and dropped Nhu at the airport before stopping at the famous Hoggy's for dinner. Josh didn't go for the Hoggy's challenge to my disappointment, but he did get the full rack, which was funny enough. Then we drove to Granville for fireworks and carnival rides. Sarah and I accompanied Charlotte on the ferris wheel although really it was more like Charlotte accompanying Sarah and me--she hardly seemed to notice the height but let's just say it was plenty high enough for me as I tried not to pee in my pants. Fortunately we were some of the last people off before it broke down for the night. Probably wouldn't be too happy of a camper if we had gotten stuck up there. Then we went and watched the "boom-booms" which were beautiful. When they were over we went back to the airport to drop Josh off for a nice airport sleepover before heading to a gas station for some Snickers icecream bars and Mick's G.I. Joe BattleJuice. Which, for the record, did not taste all that great. Our last stop before reaching hope was the old insane asylum in Bangs, Ohio...where Fred went to Bible College 20 years ago. So it was a Bible College for a while, after the asylum years. And last night he informed us that it was abandoned and condemned...and it was definitely creepy looking at 1 AM, for all we could see with the car headlights.
This morning we set off checking out dorms that the 450 EYFers had stayed in. My job was letting Charlotte take me around and shutting all the windows. Somewhere around there, when we were in Hanna, Fred and Mick came running out with squirt guns. That's where it all started. Like the good and fair person Fred is, he piled these mysteriously appearing squirt guns in the hall for us to grab. I didn't put mine down for at least an hour, when it started to get more intense. We found a 12-pack of relatively large water bottles in one of the rooms, and someone had the bright idea of using those rather than squirt guns. That's when the real fun began. We were lifting mattresses all over the place and Fred had no idea what he had coming when he said mid-laugh, "Olivia's really just an accesory." I grabbed that water bottle so fast and ran after him. It's all a blur from there. It turned into the girls against the boys pretty quick, and I don't even know what happened when all of a sudden, I mean, seriously out of NOWHERE, I had NOTHING to do with it, Fred put me in a choke-hold and wrestled me to the ground and maintains that it was Mick who poured an entire Nalgene bottle of water on my face. So at this point I'm just laughing hysterically and might as well have jumped into a pool, or so I thought. But I'm not about to let Fred get away with it so I'm still running after him with a bottle of water or two, when he gets the great idea to go into one of the bathrooms, "looking for a towel." Of course I follow, bad-mouthing him all the way, when again, OUT OF NOWHERE, he grabs me and wrestles me into the SHOWER and turns the water on and closes the curtain. Oh man, it was just so funny. Words really just don't do that moment justice. And I was just shocked. I mean, I guess I knew he had it in him but it was just so hilarious. And of course I'm still trying to run after him but my flip-flops are all slippery and soaking wet. Anyway. I don't know what happened after that...I wasn't too in a hurry to give it all up. Anyway, I made sure I had the last word with Mick but he says he has a whole month to get back at me. We'll just see about that. For dinner Mick went to visit Ashley and Fred took Sarah, Mary (her sister who is visiting for the weekend) and I to Peggy Sue's, the famous pie place, where we ate a whole lot of food and solved Fred's crazy mysteries in record time. I think it was somewhere along the drive there that I had the bright idea to go check out the asylum in the daylight, and Fred wasn't about to let that go after dinner was over. So we drove over there, expecting to find the freaky looking building a little easier to see in the daylight...but little did we know exactly what would be visible. So we're driving along the road in front of it when we get there (and here's where the picture comes in, compliments to Sarah), and I'm looking up at it, and I either started screaming at the top of my lungs or yelled, "Isn't that a face in the window??" or both. Oh my gosh I'm still freaked out just thinking about it. Sarah and Mary are in the back and they start screaming too and I keep looking back at it to make sure I'm not imagining it, but it's definitely there, a face with a body, a pretty dead-looking body, right in the window of the house. And Fred is sitting there about to cry, he's laughing so hard. And of course he drives the car right up to the house, parks it and gets out to get a better look. Before we know it he's disappearing back behind the trees and we're honking the horn at him but not daring to get out of the car. He was gone for so long that we eventually called him and after several rings he yells, "Help me!! Help me!!" into the phone, but by that phone Sarah just says, "You jerk, come back here." And he comes sprinting out from the other side of the house, jumps in the car, tears down the road, and I'm thinking, "oh, he's just trying his hardest to freak us out" but, I'll admit, there was a teeny part of me that at that point was still pretty worried. He took us around the back of the house, where a man and a woman were standing with a truck, and said, "This is a haunted house now. This guy's been working on it for a while and is going to open it up later in the summer. Want to check it out?" So after a crazy scramble to find a bathroom, the three of us reluctantly agreed to go in and see what it was all about. And it was definitely scary looking in there. The guy who's working on it, Dave, took us around and told us that when it's up and running, he's got 50 actors in there doing various terrifying things. Check it out at www.thehouseofnightmares.com . No joke. It's scary. So scary that we figured we need to go rent an old, happily-ever-after movie in order to be able to sleep tonight. So now we're gonna go watch Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn, the love of my life. Hopefully I'll make it through the night, and I'm sure tomorrow will include plenty more excitement. Oh, it's all so great. I really love these guys. So much fun. Goodnight everyone.