6.10.2013 Family Camping Trip Day 2

After a not so restful night (we couldn't find Leah's pacifier...enough said) we got up to tackle day 2 of our little adventure.

While Edgar and I got breakfast ready the kids played in buckets of water.  Amazing how little amusement they really need...

 

Edgar checking the weather forecast.  Yup...rain expected.  Goody.

We headed out to another area of the state park.  It had a beautiful swimming area...but at its shallowest spot was over our head.  AND, it was spring water.  So 72 degrees.  A little chilly.  It was hot out, though, so not unbearable.  The kids wore life jackets, and, once they finally got brave enough to get in, enjoyed it.  Eli more than Leah.  It WAS cold, though.  The fact that it was over our heads, and the kids wanted to hold onto us most of the time made it a bit more challenging for Edgar and I.  We had swim noodles, which helped, but not nearly enough.  We swam for a while, though, then got out to have some lunch.  I neglected to take any pictures :(  Keeping my head above water was apparently more important...

 

At our little picnic spot.  It was a beautiful day!

 

Leah always enjoys posing for a picture.

 

Our happy family.

 

This was the swim area from a distance.  Very pretty.  The water was so clear too.

 

After lunch we went for a hike through the garden area.  Lots of waterfalls and beautiful scenery.

 

Eli got a hold of the camera and took a ton of pictures (like over 300...yay for digital cameras.)  After going through them I noticed several of feet.  He was so entertained by taking pictures.

 

Some of Eli's shots.

 

Another foot...

 

Not a bad photographer, eh?

 

As we left that area of the park, it started to rain again.  So we headed to a nearby town and had dinner at the mall.  When we got back to our site it has stopped raining, so we had a bonfire.

 

I told Leah to act silly...this is what I got.

 

Roasting some marshmallows.  Eli kept his eyes closed the entire time...I don't think he liked the smoke or the heat.  Probably not safe to always keep your eyes closed around a fire...

 

Yum!

 

Relishing each bite!

 

Leah enjoyed hers too!

 

After smores the kids enjoyed writing on random things with chalk.  Good times.  They didn't go to sleep until almost 10...clearly we didn't wear them out enough.  Either that, or the tent was still too much of a novelty to them!

Day 2 was definitely better than day 1 :)

6.9.2013 Family Camping Trip Day 1

Our family vacation finally arrived.  We've been looking forward to our camping trip for a while now, and were so excited when the day finally came.  We got up and headed out with a LOT of gear and food.  We had a check list 5 pages long.  I'm not kidding.  In the midst of the craziness of camping, I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I wanted to.  I should have taken a picture of the back of the van.  It was packed full.  We are definitely not minimalists when it comes to camping.  In fact, after this week, we realized there were a few more things we 'needed' :)  Apparently that's why we need a van...

We arrived at our site at 1:00 in the afternoon.  It was hot.  Really, really hot.  I'm not sure why I thought it wouldn't be.  But it was insanely hot.  Our site had no shade.  In hind site, we will be checking to make sure our sites in the future have shade...I really think this particular campground was more set up for campers.  So in the blistering heat we started to set up our tent.  We got it up pretty quickly, but when we went to stake it down, the ground was like cement.  Edgar had brought a hammer, but whenever he would pound the stake it would just bend.  It was extremely frustrating.  So now we are hot, the kids are going insane, cuz they just want to play in the tent, we have to keep moving the dumb thing to find a 'stakeable' spot, it's hot (have I mentioned that?) and there is a storm approaching.  After TWO HOURS, we finally got it set up and staked down.  Oh, who am I kidding, Edgar got it staked down.  The kids had been amused by playing with buckets of water, and I was trying to help, but I don't think I really was. 

Once the site was set, we drove around a bit (to cool off...) to see what was around the area.  When we came back to start dinner, it was raining.  So we found a picnic shelter at the campsite, bought some charcoal, and grilled our chicken.  I WISH I had taken a picture of Edgar standing in the pouring rain over a grill holding an umbrella.  It would have been funny, if we weren't so hungry.  After over an hour of waiting for the chicken to finish cooking we finally ate.  The rain had stopped, and we were hoping for a nice campfire.  Then we saw another storm coming.  The REAL storm...At this point we were kinda over it...so we went to the tent and got ready for bed.

 Then it started to rain.  And rain and rain and rain.  This was the view from the tent.  We got 2 inches.  That's a lot of rain when you are staying in a tent.  At one point put my hand down on the floor of the tent, and it felt like the top of a water bed.  There was a river flowing under us I am sure...Our little Coleman tent held up pretty well.  It was leaking a little bit at the seams, but nothing too bad.  It was raining REALLY hard, so we were just glad it held up. 

 I think Edgar was pretty pooped out by this point.  We both were thinking of just packing up and going home-a very frustrating day.  Stuff memories are made of, though :) 

 Not surprisingly, the kids never had any idea anything was even wrong.  They LOVE the tent, and were thrilled to have some family time in the tent.  They played for a while before going to bed.

It was a rough start to the trip, but we made it.  And now we can say we've camped in a storm before.  There was plenty of thunder and lightning along with the torrential downpour.  So we are just that much more experienced...We also know that apparently we need to get titanium stakes if we ever go back to this campsite...

3.13.13 Celebrate with...bowling!

 So today is a day to celebrate...someone turned 40.  I'll let you guess who.  So after a hard day of work, we went bowling with the kids.  We had never gone before...but we definitely will go again!  We had bumpers up and this little ramp thing.  We tried without the ramp once.  Just once.  It took 5 minutes to make it to the pins, so we used the ramp the rest of the time.

 

 Leah did quite well!  Though all she really cared about was carrying the ball over and watching it go down the ramp.  She didn't quite get the whole goal of the process.  By the end of the game she was grabbing her ball and running to push it down the ramp all by herself.

 

Eli did really well too.  He wanted to carry the ball himself too :)  He loved it.  His Abuelo loves to go too, so I see a 'boys night' in their future.

 

 

 

I couldn't get a picture with Leah's score on it too...she had 92 I think.  I wanted to point out my score.  That's right, it was 160.  My best score ever.  We'll just ignore that 3 of my spares came from my ball bouncing off the bumper bars and knocking down remaining pins.  I'm holding on to that score for forever.

3.11.2013 Feeding Ducks

 It's Spring Break here, so getting out and going to the park is a top priority!  We headed to a nearby park, and when we got there we were surprised to see the ducks out and ready to play.

 

 Fortunately we had some leftover crusts from our lunch that we had eaten in the car, and the kids had a blast feeding them.

 

 The look on Leah's face makes me laugh.  That's how she was the whole time the ducks were around.  Eli was pretty excited too.  I couldn't stop thinking about the roast duck we ate a few weeks ago.  There's something wrong with me...

 

 We finally got around to playing at the park.

 

 This little musical park is another favorite of the kids'.

 

 This spinny seat 'thing' is pretty fun.  Leah got spinning really fast in it.  She giggled the whole time.  Then she walked around crooked for a while, and that made ME giggle.

 

Eli has been trying to climb a lot lately.  He was pretty proud of himself for making it to the top!

Another beautiful day!

3.10.2013 A walk in the woods

 Sunday we headed out to go for a little walk in the woods.  We're trying to enjoy this mild spring we've been having-we've loved every minute of it!  Sunday was a GORGEOUS day.  I told Edgar that I thought it was the nicest day I'd ever experienced since moving here-it really was that nice!

 

 Off on the trail! 

 

 The first part that we went on was a boardwalk.  For some reason Leah feels the need to lay down and look through the cracks...

 

 So pretty...

 

 Eli had a blast on the hike.  I think daddy has found an outdoor adventure buddy!

 

 We then walked on a trail for a long time.  It was completely beautiful.  There were all these root things coming up out of the ground.  Leah said they were monkeys.  I have no idea why.  Now I will always look at them and think of them as monkeys...

 

 Some of the beauty we saw...

 

 

 

 

Gorgeous!

 

 After a while Leah was lagging behind a bit, so she got a ride :)

 

Eli spent a lot of time throwing sticks into the river.  He discovered that they floated, so I think he threw 100 stick in on the hike.  He was so entertained by their floating.

It was a really fun walk.  We probably did just under 2 miles.  Eli didn't bat an eye at that distance-I think he could have kept going.  Leah was a little more...vocal about it, but after a snack and a ride on daddy's shoulders, she was good to go.

Can't wait to go again!!