Journaling Week of 8-11-13

PACKING
We spent all of Monday getting packed for our Campout!!  We were so excited and so prepared this time!  I felt like we were super organized and I loved that we were getting such a good headstart!  Everyone worked so hard to get the house cleaned up on Tuesday too, so that we could come home to a nice clean house.  I loved that part :) 8-12-13

CAMPING TRIP 2013  SOUTH FORK
We left Tuesday afternoon, came home Friday afternoon, during Nate's leave.  I don't really feel like narrating every moment of our campout.  I just want to point out some of the memorables:

- Our campsite was right next to the river, the water, the garbage cans, and the toilets!  Doesn't get better than that :).  (the smell was bearable :))  I kept thinking it would have been the perfect site for camping LAST year with how disabled Nate and I were, it would have been a lot easier.  In fact, we thought about last year's campout a lot the whole time, thinking about how hard it was, and how much pain Nate and I were in, and yet how fun it was.  How memorable it was.  I was hoping we could recreate that level of memorableness this year :).  HOpefully we succeeded.
- We loved the camp manager.  He was nowhere to be seen!  In fact, I only saw him once when he came to give me my parking pass.  He was too scared of Buddy to come too close to our camp and just stood there until I could get to him.  I LOVED that they weren't there every second, micromanaging the place.  Unlike most campgrounds that we've been to, he left us alone :).  I liked it.  They didn't even say anything about Heidi's car when they came up.
- Lots of time down by the river.  We found a cool little wading area up the river a little ways where everyone got to go play in the water.  They got braver as the time went on and waded out into the river a little ways.  We were wishing we'd brought tubes to float the river.  Someday.
- Jack learned how to throw rocks into the water :).
- Luke and Noah (who don't play together all that much anymore- not since Luke started school) spent a lot of time together.  They build a cool thing out of rocks. 
- Bradley taught his little brothers how to build fires, set squirrel traps (one of the downsides to this campground was the lack of small wildlife- didn't see any squirrels)
- The moose!
- The FLIES!!  And black bees!!
- NO MOSQUITOS!!!  YAY!!!  We were quite fond of the truck that came by in the evening to spray for mosquitos.  Definitely worth it.
- Bleach pen shirts.  This was our tie dye replacement.  I thought it would give them more chance to be creative.  I thought it was relatively easy and a fun thing.  Not as colorful of course :).  Luckily we had those red shirts from our picture.  I made Jack's using the spray bottle, I wish I hadn't saturated it so much, didn't really do what I wanted, but it was still pretty cute.  Charity helped do the back, Kelly helped do the front of Erika's.  She loves hers.  Noah drew his all by hiself!  It looks so adorable.  Luke did his own thing too, with some pretty cool designs around his name.  Bradley made a Super Brad sign, very cool.  Kelly designed hers too and completed it with an "I am awesome" on the back.  Charity did a really cute one with her name criss-crossing on the front and then sprayed the back-very cool.  Nate and I are going to have to make ours one of these nights.  We ran out of pen stuff.
- Pillowcases.  Using fabric pens, we designed our own pillowcases with all of the things we enjoyed doing together this summer.  Then on the other side we wrote little messages to each other.  Almost like a Summer Year BOok :).  I'm hoping the kids cherish theirs.  I know I will mine.
- We wanted to swim in this reservoir that we had seen online, but when we got up to it, we found a very un-kidfriendly reservoir.  With steep rocky sides, no place to sit, and very deep water.  We did sit and watch a girl jump off the rocks and luckily the water was deep enough and she jumped far enough out that she didn't hit any rocks.  I was worried.  Had my CPR and first aid stuff going through my head just in case.  But after a few minutes we decided to just go swim at Pineview.  I was bummed that it wasn't anything new and different than we'd done all summer :) but the kids (AND BUDDY!) had a great time!! 
- BUDDY!!
- NOah's near death experience.  Noah got a little too deep in the water, went under, and then made his way over to the side before anyone saw.  It was pretty devastating.  I felt awful.  I had been taking pictures of everyone, so coincidentally, I have a picture before and after the incident, and one of Erika during, but I think I learned why I need to just use full auto and not mess around with Manual.  It takes too much of my attention.  Poor Noah.  He was so brave though, got back in the water, and even went pretty far out the next time we were up there.  We did go up there twice, once with John and Heidi on the way home so that they could see Buddy swim :).
- The racoons!!  Okay, I have to tell this story.  So the second night, I woke up to some noises around our camp.  There was quite a bit of noise.  Like someone was ransacking the place.  I had images of a bear, tromping around, knocking stuff over.  Then another sound made me think that it might actually be a moose!  Possibly tangled up in the awning.  Then some more sounds made me pretty sure that it was a bear.  (Funny how our thoughts can take us to crazy places!)  I had images of the bear coming over to our tent, tearing it apart and eating all of us.  SO I started praying.  I prayed my little heart out!!  I was SO shaky and so nervous for what could happen!!  Finally, (and I did give it quite a while) I decided to wake up Nate.  He was shocked by all the noise as well, and ended up poking his head out the tent door.  Unfortunately you couldn't see much from our tent, so he eventually got brave and went out to investigate.  He must have been more sure that it wasn't a bear than I was.  He took the flashlight and Buddy :).  I heard Nate walk out there and then say, "Go get 'em Buddy!"  And then it was a while later before Buddy came running back.  He jumped into the tent and then his whole body shivered like he'd seen a ghost!!  Then turned around and stuck his nose out of the tent to watch for Nate.  Nate wasn't with him!  I got a little scared wondering what Nate was doing out there that Buddy was so scared of!  I could see the flashlight still, so I assumed he was okay.  Finally Nate came back to the tent.  He jokingly said, "Thanks for the back up Buddy!"  Apparently 5 raccoons had decided to crash our campout.  They had really gone to town knocking things over and getting into stuff.  One of them was in Buddy's kennel eating the dog food.  Nate said that they weren't scared of him at all, and even less scared of Buddy!  Buddy took one look at them and came running for the tent!!  Little wuss! :).  I was relieved that Nate had been able to scare them away.  And we all went back to sleep, but what a funny night!  We learned a lot about Buddy :).
- Roasting Starbursts
- Heidi and John!  I loved that they laughed at my bottled water/buddy joke :)
- Sweet potatoes... mmmmmm
- The GIGANTIC BEETLE ON MY BACK!!!!!  That was insane.  I was just sitting there with Jack, minding my own business.  Leaning forward a little to catch some of the heat from the fire, I felt something land on my back.  I reached back and flicked it a little, thinking I'd done the job.  Then a couple seconds later, I could hear a squeaking noise from close behind me and I remembered that I'd had a bug land on me, so I wondered if I'd possibly missed it.  So I leaned over toward Kelly, asking, "Hey, Kelly, is there something on my back?"  I will never forget the look on her face.  She went from a huh? to a AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!  Screaming in terror in under 2 seconds.  Luckily Nate came over and saved the day.  Everyone was telling me it was a HUGE BEETLE, but I wasn't convinced until I saw it!!!!! in all of it's at least 2 inches long glory.... it was SO CREEPY!!!!  Luckily that was the last night there... I'm not sure I would have survived another one, because every time I felt even the slightest hint of a bug I was convulsing.
- Smore's on Striped cookies... mmmmmm
- There was a cool cave down the trail that everyone enjoyed walking to.  We got John to go inside of it for us to see what was on the other side.
- Our yummy Shepard's Pie- SO GOOD!!  Everyone ate it!
- Turbo Fruit Snacks.
- Finding the glasses frames on the beach of Pineview
- The doggie friends for Buddy to swim with
- Hanging up the cups with clothespins
- Erika: "I don't want to hold your hand while I go potty- Kelly made me hold hers"
- Kelly worrying about Erika falling in the toilet :).
- Going easy on the snacks when we were shopping and wishing we'd splurgy-splurged a little more :).
- Charity being dragged through the water, on her bumb, by Buddy, because he wanted to get a closer look at the tubers!
- The foam pad
- The ice staying frozen in the cooler almost the entire time!
- rocks, rocks, and more rocks
- Fishing trip - The third morning- everyone left Jack and I at camp and went up to the reservoir to fish.  Not productive, but I think they had fun :).  Jack and I took a nap, sat around, wrote in my journal, cleaned up camp, and sat around some more.  It was heavenly.
- Nate and the kids unpacking the whole car, into the backyard, setting up the tents and chairs to air out and EVERYTHING, while I took a shower!  Wahoo!
- Little Caesar's Pizza courtesy of Heidi and John
- Makeover!


Everybody's most memorables:
Nate-
Me- The Beetle.  By far.
Charity- We got to bring Buddy!!  Buddy's first family trip.
Kelly- The river and the scenery.
Bradley- The Cave
Luke- Bleach T-shirts
Noah- Roasting ice cream (which we didn't do.  Maybe he's talking about the treats we tried to make but burned.)
Erika- Going to the lake and roasting Starbursts
Jack- New shoes and falling on his head off of the tote.

I LOVED this campout!!  It was relatively relaxing and such a fun time together.