Camping Vacation

On Father's Day we left for our very first tent camping trip with the kids! We went with a group of people from church. It was such a fun couple of days, I hardly know where to start.

We were the first to arrive at the campground so we started exploring right away. After the others started showing up, we set up our little tent city:-)

Our Tent


After we got all the tents set up, we roasted hot dogs over the fire and then had S'mores and marshmallows while we listened to the night sounds. It was almost 10:00 before out kids when to bed, but it didn't take them very long to fall asleep:-)

It was forcasted to be very rainy and unfortunately the weather man was correct for Monday morning. It was just a slow drizzle, but enough to make things nice and wet. It was however very humid, so it felt really warm even though it was raining.

Sarah "I don't want my picture taken!"

We were determined not to let a little rain get in the way of having a good time. After breakfast about half our group set off on a hike through the woods...

It was so muddy that I ended up with a stick stuck to the bottom of my shoe.

Some nature things we saw on our walk
A couple really neat looking fallen trees


A beautiful field of grass


Look closely and you will see a bunch of bright blue dragonflies.
There were tons of them!


On our way back from our hike, it stopped raining - It was still cloudy, but it gave us a small glimmer of hope, because it was 'supposed' to rain all day!






Geese down at the water - The kids went down to see them and they were smart,
they didn't stick around for very long!


The kids checking out the water - notice how gray the sky still is








With the weather clearing up we decided to go and rent a canoe after lunch.
Sarah was the first one to decide
that you didn't need water to canoe:-)

We were camping on a point and because of the way the wind was blowing it made the water really choppy on the side where it would be easy to put the canoe in, but if we paddled around to the other side of the point the water was as calm as glass. The only thing was we were going to have to climb up and down a pretty steep embankment to get to the water. That didn't stop us, it just merely added to the adventure of it all, we tied a rope to a tree, to help give us some stability up and down.

Michael was in charge of attaching the
rope and getting it down the hill




Our canoe delivery team - the four of them hiked about two blocks carrying the canoe and then put it in the water and paddled to the calm part of the point.


Let the rides begin







David's favorite place to drink

In the afternoon Sarah actually asked to take a nap! When we got in the tent she asked for her pajamas, I didn't think she would actually fall asleep, but sure enough, she probably slept for a couple hours at least, all on her own in the tent:-)

While we were canoeing the sun came out and the kids were able to swim and fly kite.



Checking on the weather coming...




Night games

We had internet on Jeremy's phone so we were aware that we were suppoed to get some pretty nasty storms Monday night. At first it was just supposed to be thunderstorms, but then they also added a flood watch, because we were going to be getting 3 inches of rain!! With that we decided it was in everyones best interest to break the rules a little. There were two buildings on the property, a kitchen/dinning hall and then a craft room which was just a big open room that had a plywood floor and a couple tables. We were not supposed to sleep in the buildings, but after seeing what was coming, and knowing we were leaving in the morning, we chose to pack up our then dry tents, and have everyone sleep in the craft building. So after dinner it was operation pack up the tents and move all the beds!!! We ended up with 14 people in the craft room and 2 in the dining hall.

This proved to be the BEST decision ever. About 1:00am the storms rolled in and it poured!!! The rain and the thunder was so loud, and the neatest thing about was that most everyone slept through it without even hearing the storm!

Tuesday dawned bright and early with the sun shining. We were responsible for cleaning up the camp ground and we had assigned jobs the night before to people. Everyone worked together as a great team. We needed to be out by 10:00am and we were actually ready to leave by 9:00!

We packed so much into the short time we were there and fun was had by all. We are already talking about going back next year!