Camping!!

Last weekend we continued our somewhat regular tradition of camping with our good friends Marc & Stacey and their kiddos: Drew, Tyler & Joshua. We usually plan to go the first weekend of August. I say somewhat regular because last year Joshua was born on July 7th and Stacey didn't really feel up to taking a 4 week old camping especially after having a C-section, and I sure didn't blame her! But this year Joshua was walking and it was game on!! We headed up HWY108 and found a neat little campground called Fraser Flat. We thought that by going on a Thursday we'd have an easy time finding a site, but ironically most of the sites were already full. We did find a great site, but it had one problem... it was labeled handicapped. We drove in circles trying to find the camp host to see if it was handicap only or just handicap accessible, but no luck. So we just decided to set up camp at the site and if the camp host showed up and made us move, oh well. Marc & Stacey arrived about an hour later and the real fun began!

The Tree Man

The weather was still somewhat warm, although certainly not the 100+degrees it would have been in Copper and we had a nice breeze as well. Our site had lots of shade which made it quite pleasant too. In fact the only real irritation was the large quantity of meat bees that showed up when we started cooking. The first night we had tacos and that must be a favorite meal for meat bees because they were everywhere. We ate in a hurry and quickly cleaned up. Kris created some ingenious traps that he hung around the camp and while they didn't eradicate all the bees they certainly killed a bunch of them. We also found a face of a man that someone had created on one of the trees near the fire pit.

Jonathan & Drew

Squishy faces!

Marc & Stacey- LOVE them!!

Aaron aka "Cool Dude" having an early morning snack

Aaron loving on Mama- I LOVE being a mother of boys!

Me & My fantastic husband (and baby Chewy), taken by Jonathan

Josh's first camping trip! I think he had a blast!

Stacey and her HUGE marshmallows

One major highlight of the trip that the boys simply went crazy over was roasting marshmallows. This was the first year they were really old enough (and stayed awake long enough) to get in on the smores action. And Stacey had brought these enormous marshmallows, bigger than any I'd ever seen before. What fun they had!! Most of their marshmallows caught fire and were pretty crispy but that didn't keep them from being devoured. Aaron usually can't stand to have his hands sticky, actually held his marshmallow and tried eating it, but only got a couple bites before trying to hand it off to me saying, "Mommy this is just too messy for me!"

Marshmallow Time!!

Drew & Jonathan enjoying their marshmallows

Tyler takes a big bite!

Aaron's marshmallow mess!

Tyler climbed up on this cement block all by himself and was very excited

 We also had a gentle river that ran alongside the campground so we spent one afternoon splashing and playing there. The water was very cold, but boy did it feel good! It was pretty shallow but that didn't stop us from getting as wet as we could.

Our 4 big boys!

Aaron and his "boat"

Stacey, Josh, Tyler & Jonathan

Kris braves the cool water!

Digging in the dirt- a favorite camping activity

After packing up camp on Saturday we'd planned on going up to Pinecrest Lake to have a picnic lunch and play at the beach. Apparently everyone else in the county had the same idea because that place was packed and there wasn't a parking place to be found. We quickly abandoned that idea and instead had a pizza lunch at the Strawberry Inn. After a thoroughly satisfying lunch we gave our hugs and goodbyes and headed for home.

4 boys on sticks!

Honestly I wasn't looking forward to camping being nearly 7 months pregnant, but I had a great time! I was most worried about getting a good night's sleep and so brought my big body pillow. I ended up sleeping very well both nights. There was a full moon and we left the rain cover off our tent the first night so it was amazing to just lay on our air mattress and look up at the moon. God's creation is so awesome!!


We sure made some wonderful memories this trip. The boys had fun searching for pine cones for the fire. One morning while Kris was still sleeping in our tent the boys started another pine cone hunt. Tyler would exclaim "PINE CONE!" at the top of his lungs as he found each one. Well one time he was right next to our tent (and Kris' sleeping head) when he found a really big pine cone and let loose one of his best proclamations. Kris joined us not long afterwards and said that Tyler's "PINE CONE!" was the most unusual alarm clock he'd ever had! We also had a late night visitor in the form of a super chubby raccoon. Kris was the only one awake and we'd put our food in the cars hours earlier. But Kris said that he heard something jump on the picnic table and was surprised to see the fattest raccoon ever, it's belly dragging the ground! He tried to scare it off but it really didn't budge until it was good and ready and then it waddled off. We also celebrated Jonathan's 6th birthday on Thursday night. I can't believe he's 6 already! He's growing into such an amazing boy and I'm so grateful that God chose to place him in our family.

Happy Birthday JJ!!