Run With The Fishes

You might remember that almost two weeks ago we celebrated a couple of birthdays at my house. Yes, I know, that’s how far behind I really am. Stick with me while I do some catching up on the site. It should be a jumbled mess of fun. It’s like after you get a little behind, you think to yourself, “Eh, no problem, I’ll catch everything up this weekend.” Only, you don’t and instead of just a few days of being behind, you get two, maybe even three, weeks worth of things that need to be written down for memory’s sake.

Anyway, back to the birthday celebrations. This year we went with a camping theme. We purchased just about everything a family of five would need to go camping. Allison managed to get the best sleeping bag (she was one of the birthday girls).

We decided that we should use all of our gear right away. It just didn’t seem right to buy it all and then have to wait until the warmer weather of spring before we could put it to use. Plus we were tough. We could handle a little chill in the air. Really, the weather was perfect during the day. Just cool enough for jackets or sweaters. Comfortable enough to sit around and read books or take up whittling. We had hot chocolate, meals cooked over an open fire, and roasted marshmallows for s’mores.

The dim spot to our camping trip was the cold night weather. It was just our luck that we picked the coldest weekend of the year (up to that date) to spend the night outside. The tent kept out the wind. We all snuggled into our sleeping bags and for the most part stayed comfortable.

The only time anyone was really crabby was when it was time to get up and get dressed. “I hate camping!”, were the first words out of Allison’s mouth. Of course, they were instantly taken back with the help of some warm clothes and hot chocolate.

A few of the highlights for the weekend:
Allison turning around and warming her butt up by the fire, “Aw yeah, that’s the stuff”.
Nathan using my smaller camera most of the weekend. He has a pretty good eye.
Zoey being fascinated by little etchings in the sticks she found.
Everyone’s enthusiasm for spending some time outdoors.

Camping was perfect. It was such a good little break from every day stuff. No work, no video games, no computers (okay, we did watch a movie on my laptop before bedtime), no tvs. Just family time. I can’t wait to do it again when the weather starts to get warmer.

All of the pictures from the camping trip can be seen here.