First camping trip with all the kids!

In keeping with the catching up theme now I will share about our fun little camping trip with J a couple weekends ago. We went camping for two nights up at a lake about an hour away from our house. Our van was packed to overflowing. In fact before we ever going camping again I insist we have a trailer or rack of some sort, we were ridiculously crammed in like sardines. But it was worth it, the kids had a blast. Spike has been insisting that he was going fishing with his uncle J when he came for a visit, so we made sure to bring the fishing poles! My one and only picture of J on this trip. He was trying desperately to get out of the way, but I snap it as fast as I could. I've had to get pretty sneaky these days with the pictures.

This camp site is such a beautiful place. It's next to a lake in the mountains and is surrounded by trees and then open pockets of fields. There is a cool bridge over the water and a little play area for the kids. Lots of fun to be had. We are thinking it's going to be our yearly go to place for camping with the kids. I use the word camping loosely as we ended up getting a cabin {thankfully there just happened to be one available, when we tried to reserve one they had been all booked up} I had packed up for tent camping but was so relieved to get a cabin instead. Especially since it decided to down pour the first night we were there. I don't think in reality we are ready for tent camping just yet with all the kiddos.

The kids loved this tire swing, I could not believe how many times they wanted to spin around on it! I got sick just watching.

Running around on the grassy hills. The only big negative about this place is the horrendous amount of goose poop that was all over the place... That being said in the three days we were there I never once saw a goose. Weird. We did see a really cute raccoon though, and deer, and about a million tadpoles. I kid you not, there were black clouds of tadpoles on the edge of the lake in one spot.

The boys fishing. They didn't catch anything, but they had fun trying. Actually I take that back they did catch something on the very first night, but it was so tiny it got tossed back in. It was cute how excited they got {my husband included}.

Daddy love.

Atty was obsessed with this net. In fact he threw the most embarrassing, have to go back to the cabin, fit over it. He said he needed to go potty so I asked Bubu to hold the net while he went. He did not want to let go of that net for even a minute. From the moment those words left my mouth until about 15 minutes later by the time we made it back to the cabin the boy fell apart. He didn't get that net back for quite some time. Mommy was not a happy camper.

No camping trip is complete with out s'mores {unfortunately, as I would rather skip the whole thing}. Atty roasted his banana chunks again this year and it didn't bother him one bit. I made him sweet crackers and cashew butter "chocolate" and he had s'mores the magic diet way. :)

On our last night there we went out at dusk to go bat spotting. Wow was there a lot of bats! I couldn't get any pictures, because they are super fast. It was really fun though, we sat and fished and got all excited every time a bat swooped by.

It was fun that is until this happened. It was Spikes turn to hold the fishing pole and I looked away for a moment to watch bats with the other kids and when I looked back over he had decided to wrap the fishing wire around his wrist! Just like that. This kid is always getting himself in the weirdest predicaments. He's the same kid that shoved a crayon so far up his nose we had to take him to the ER, and they had to sedate him to get that crayon out! Anyways, it ended up being no biggy, my hubby just clipped the string. I was freaked out there for a second though because it looked so tight! Lesson learned I hope. Lesson being either don't look away when Spike is fishing, or don't wrap fishing line around your arm, either one.

Beautiful time, and an even more beautiful spot.

And I still have more catching up to do... sigh. :)