Labor Day Weekend Camping....

Friday ... Left work a little bit early to get home, packed up and to the camp grounds. Got home and started loading the car (mind you, Austin and I had already started packing the car the night before) My goodness there is a lot of stuff to take camping with you. Food, clothes, pillows, blankets, tent, cooler, etc etc. I got the car almost packed and got a call from camp .... "bring 10 lbs of bacon, soda, ice and bbq sauce, oh and by the way, the new tent you got because the one had a hole in it ... well the seam for the floor at the back of the tent is sewn to the wall of the tent and won't stake down properly " So of course, when I finish packing I head off to the store and get the groceries that we need ($77 later). Try to fit all of that crap in the car on top of what I've already got in there, wondering the entire time WHERE I'm going to put my kids on the drive home. I get to camp about 7ish. Luke spots momma and comes running over. Sure makes me feel good! The tent doesn't look so bad, however, will be returned AGAIN. GRRR Thats a lot of money for a tent and to have 2 be defective ... well, they do say third times a charm. Got the car unloaded and sat around the campfire for a little while. I had packed Canasta ... and we played a 3-5 hour game of Canasta before retiring for the night .... (note, it was 2-3 in the morning when we went to bed)

Saturday... Luke fussed off and on thru the night, he was UP at 7AM. I had a headache out of this world. My eye felt as if it were softball size. Tried to keep him quiet till everyone else got up. He wanted everything to play with from logs to dirt to baseballs and horseshoes. I helped with making breakfast and was successful in not cutting myself on the potato slicer. After breakfast was cleaned up, we played some horseshoes. Now, at 36 years old, you'd think I'd had played since my family (grandparents, aunts and uncles) used to at family functions, but no, I'd never played. It was a lot of fun! I think I only scored about 4 points, but it was fun. Austin and Sydney played, paired up with Doug (Syd's Dad) and Sid (Syd's Papa and Austin's Uncle) Austin had 4 ringers, the last of which won the game for he and Uncle Sid. Doug later was taking Austin and Sydney fishing, so Luke and I tagged along. Luke and I sat in the water throwing rocks, we weren't even knee deep, Luke stayed right by momma. Austin caught a small fish, what kind it was, I have no clue, but he got the first and the biggest of all that were caught that weekend. They were just doing catch and release. We played in the river for a long time. Luke had prune hands in no time. When we got back to camp, fixed dinner and played Pictionary. We had a good time, but boy oh boy, I can not draw. They really made fun of the goat I drew. :( Though, it was pretty bad ... they said my poodle looked almost like my goat minus the horns .... Artist, I'm not.

Sunday... Zack turned 2!! We got up, decorated with Balloons and streamers ... Zack's grandma came out with Aunt Chris and Uncle Sid. I learned to play Spades. That was fun .... The kids ran around and played volleyball, played with the toys we brought ... they just had fun! The bigger kids, Austin and Sydney went swimming at the pool with Doug. Austin has really improved with his swimming since last year Memorial Day. He couldnt swim at all and always wanted Mom. He's a little fish now. Sid deep fried a turkey, I'd never had turkey that way, boy was it good!! Saber (Austin's cousin) came up, made some comment about not having any friends, I said "hey, whats that say about me" He replied with the best comment he could have ever made "You are family, you don't count" ((note, that made me feel really good because I'm NOT family, Austin is, but the fact that he considers me his Aunt makes me feel so good!)) After dinner we had Zack's party ... he got lots of trains and cars and Thomas movies. It was fun but boy were those kids tired.

Monday ... Packing day ... Typically on Monday, we "eat out" for breakfast, have bisquits and gravy from the campground restaurant. This year, we cooked our own which made us run later in getting packed up ... By the time we got camp broke down and packed up it was going on 4pm. We all took the kids back to the river to swim, when we got done, we changed and headed out for dinner. We had dinner at Skippy's. It was really pretty good. It was about 9:30 when we got home from camping .... Long weekend, but was a lot of fun!

Hope you all had as much fun!