A Camping We Will Go

Well, we had been hearing about this camp for a while now.  It’s pretty much a second home to my Dad, who would be perfectly content tent camping and living off the land for weeks at a time.  Mom, on the other hand, is not much of an outdoors woman, but she is a good wife, so she often goes to the camp with him to keep him company and give his camper a good cleaning.  However, she was at my house when my Dad left for his most recent stay at the camp.  I had injured my hip and she told him she wouldn’t feel right leaving a crippled momma to take care of three children alone.  Unbeknownst to him, we had a plan a brewin'.  We would head back to their house early and drive up to his camp to surprise him when he least expected it. 

We surprised him alright!  Took him a while to get back to the camp, because he had been determined to get himself a deer.  When he finally arrived back, he thought there were trespassers in his camper.  Imagine his delight when he opened the door to find all of us with goofy grins glued to our faces.

And being the great Dad/Husband/PawPaw that he is, he decided to forego his morning hunt the next day, so he could make some wonderful memories with us.

Here is how our camping trip went:

Someone was really excited to get on the road.

We were packed in like sardines, but still smiling.

Upon arrival, we realized my Dad had already headed back out for his afternoon hunt, so we spent time playing and taking in the beauty of God's creation.

"Nobody better mess with my chicken!"

Leave it to my Lan to be fashionable even while camping.

The kids also did a little coloring.

Lan drew a deer for PawPaw...

...while Eli drew Mommy a necklace.  He knows the way to a woman's heart ;)

At sunset, we made sure we had a front row seat.  

I love how this picture shows each of my kids' personalities so well, even though they are just silhouettes! "Easy Going Eli", "Lady-like Landry", "Crazy Cooper"

When PawPaw finally arrived, we spent the evening drinking hot chocolate...

....looking at pictures from PawPaw's game cameras.....

.....and making shadow puppets.

We finally called it a night around 9:00 p.m.  Of course there was that one moment when I was almost asleep and I felt a kid plop on me, pull open my eyelid and say "Do you wanna build a snowman?"  ...my little clown, Eli.  He keeps me laughing

We spent the next morning bonding over coffee milk on the porch

And building a fire to cook our breakfast

And what was for breakfast???

S'MORES!!!

Only when you are camping, do you have permission to eat s'mores for breakfast :)

Cooper and GiGi took a spin or two (or five) on the 4-wheeler.

While the big kids went on a treasure hunt in the sand.  They figured some pirates had dropped some coins as they were trying to run off with their stolen loot.  Can you believe that new coins would appear every time they searched?!  Of course all the adults now have empty pockets ;)

Landry also went with PawPaw to check his game cameras.  Wouldn't you know there was a Buck by his stand at the time he would have been there that morning!

 While PawPaw was gone, Eli made it his job to keep the fire going.

And Cooper was just being his normal self, running non-stop.....

 ....and living life as close to the edge as possible. 

 But we all came back in one piece....

And EXHAUSTED!!

I think we might try this again some time.