First camping trip of the season!

Our first camping trip of the season already come and gone...sigh!  It was fun, and fast, and tiring.  Camping with 4 children is very tiring, but so worth it.  I always love spending time with my family in the great outdoors.  It really is refreshing, and takes us out of our normal.  It helps us to see things in a new perspective, and we get to explore this beautiful world that God has created.  I am so thankful we get to do this so much. Having a travel trailer really makes it possible.  I don't know if I'd be so willing to do it with tents, especially in the rain.

We left on Thursday afternoon and it was threatening rain, and even thundering a little bit.  A lot like last year!  It did rain about half the time during our camping trip.  But we had a few great afternoons of sunshine and warmth.  Even when it was cloudy and not rainy, that was nice.  But, there were evenings around the fire where it started pouring and we had to cut our fire time and run for cover!

The kids did a lot of hiking and geocaching around with Grandma and Uncle Marc (they were there too in their own trailer).  They played a lot of games like Disney Headbanz (our new game for this year), Disney apples to apples, and pit.  We realized that we have a overwhelming supply of disney games in our trailer, and probably need to change them out for some non-disney ones.  I add a new game to the trailer each season, and the headbanz game was new this year.  It's a game where you wear a headband with a card facing out so you can't see who it is and you ask questions to try to figure out who you are.  That was a fun one, and pulled out many times this camping trip.

I think that about covers the highlights of the trip.  I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking...

Little Alexander.  This guy was a challenge to keep corralled in the campsite.  He just wanted to wander away, and go some where all the time!  He would just start walking down the gravel drive away from our trailer every chance he could.  Someone had to have their eye on him all the time.  So, when sister was on little brother duty, this is what they did.  She let him jump all over her.  He loved that.

 

This is his favorite way to be held, upside down.  April was begging me to help her, but of course I had to snap a shot of it first, right?

 

Aaron learned how to build his first fire.  Daddy showed him how to build the kindling, to get it started.  He loved this.  He's ready for boy scouts!



We have a new traveling buddy to join us on our camping trips now.  This is our traveling gnome.  The kids love having a gnome that goes camping with us.  We will probably take pictures of him going with us all summer.

 

A picture of the Headbanz game.  It was a great game to have sitting around the fire.  Kinda looks goofy seeing everybody with cards on their heads, made me want to laugh when I looked out the window from the trailer.



My little Aric wanted to spend a lot of his time inside the trailer.  I think he just liked being in there with me and Alex, so I got out some construction paper and we made a little craft during some quiet time.  I have some paper and supplies for quick little crafts that I just keep in the trailer.  Then we can decorate the "fridge".



Bringing Alex's space saver chair for him was a life saver.  This was the best way we could keep him contained while making s'more's.  Here he is eating his "s'more".



I think the only part he ate was the chocolate.

Apparently all April had was chocolate too??  Ha, just kidding.  I know she had at least 2 full s'mores.  Somehow she must have sneaked more chocolate.




Aric loves to roast the marshmallows, but he doesn't eat them.  Funny kid.  He only likes the chocolate, and maybe a little graham cracker.  I have to keep the chocolate bars well guarded from him.

 

We did something new this year.  We had a fun camping gift to give them on our first camping trip for the summer.  They all got pocket knife's, but the little boys didn't get real ones for obvious reasons.  They got little wooden play ones.  They LOVED these.  April got a real one, she is old enough, so she got a little pink CRKT shrimp.  You can click on the link to see a picture.  I forgot to get a picture of hers.  Here's the boys' little wooden one.  It was actually a kit, and they put them together with Daddy.  We got these at Bi-mart if anyone is interested.  Don't know if they have them anymore, but they were sure a great find.

Aric carried his around everywhere.  He loved to pretend like he was cutting back the bushes while we were hiking because there was a LOT of overgrowth on the hikes. 

These were great kits, and so easy to put together.  They close just like the real thing too.

I wasn't going to include this picture at first because it isn't a very good one, but I want a picture of the whole site to remember.  This is Metzler park, the same place that we went to last year.  It's a nice place, and it was very green and beautiful.