Camping

This last weekend we went camping. Caleb's second cousin, Tina & family, invited us to join them at Jarrell Cove State Park. Honestly, I was a little nervous about camping. Typically when our whole family sleeps in the same room (or tent as it may be) I don't get much sleep. What if Peter wakes up the whole campsite? And there was definitely no hope of the kids getting naps...or mom. Well, everything turned out OK...actually great. The first night we didn't sleep much...but the second night (and the third night), the kids slept like logs. Praise the Lord!

Anyhow, we had a great time. Tina and Lloyd have twin girls who are 4.5 years old and all 4 kids got along great. Megan and Madeline loved to play with Hannah and they loved to "mother" Peter. Every time Hannah went to the bathroom our conversation would go something like this.
H: Mom I have to go to the bathroom.
K: OK, do you want mom to go with you?
H: No, I want to go with my friends (Megan and/or Madeline) to come with me.
K: OK, great.

The girls basically did everything together. This was great because then Hannah didn't need me to do everything with her.

Anyhow, here are some photos from our weekend.

This is all the food I packed.

And here is my ingenious salad idea. I made a pasta salad and a potato salad to take with us, but I only had one bowl with a lid, and that bowl was too larger for either salad. So what I did was I made a divider and then put both salads in the same bowl, as seen below. Pretty cool, huh? I was really proud of myself for that idea! :-D

Lloyd brought a hammock that was the perfect size for the kids. This was a source of much entertainment, whether it was sitting in the hammock or pushing someone else in the hammock...both activities were fun. Here's Hannah enjoying the hammock.

Here's Megan carrying Hannah to the bathroom. The first time this happened, Hannah didn't have any shoes so Megan carried her across the rocks. Apparently it was so much fun that they did it again, even though this time Megan doesn't have any shoes on either. Kids?

Here we are going down to the dock. Aren't they cute?

Hannah, Megan, and Madeline at the dock. Unfortunately Hannah says "cheese" with such vigor that her eyes are closed in every picture I took down at the dock.

Here they are in the life raft.

Tina and Lloyd had these blow-up flamingos that they set up outside their tent. Well, one of Peter's favorite activities was decimating the flamingo population.

Here we are by the water.

While we were there we saw several hints of wildlife, and heard even more. One night when I woke up to a peep from Peter I heard rummaging around our campsite. I opened the door and and turned on the flashlight and saw 3 raccoons...one of which was trying to tip over our large gray bin. Luckily, he didn't have any success! Anyhow, here's a deer checking out our neighbors campsite.

And here's a raccoon that we scared up a tree. OK, so we didn't do it on purpose. We just saw the raccoon and the raccoon saw us so he went running up a tree.

And here's Lloyd capturing a picture of the raccoon with the mega lens.