Camping

We had a lot of fun on our camping trip. The weather was perfect! No Rain!!! I think that's a first for our camping trips. We've been camping long enough now that the kids can almost put the tent up by themselves. We didn't want Daddy to do much work since it was Father's Day weekend, but we needed his help a little bit. One big way we needed his help was in blowing up our air mattresses. We have an electric pump, but there were no outlets at this campground! Not even in the bath house!!! So, Neal blew up three of the mattresses by himself, and Beth and I were able to combine our efforts and blow up the fourth. I don't know how he did it!

Here they are getting the tent laid out on the pad:

Here's our camp site. Our tent is approximately 10 ft by 17 ft. We get our four air mattresses in there and our suitcase, and have plenty of room to move around. The rain fly comes off and you can look at the stars at night. We've done that in the past, but there was a threat of rain the entire weekend so we left the rain fly on the whole time.

Here are our super heroes having fun!

The view at the beach was beautiful! It was just warm enough that the kids could enjoy jumping in the cold lake. Not the parents though! Our breakfast the first morning was "Omelet in a bag." I first heard of this recipe from my friend Perri. I thought it sounded like a good meal for camping, so we made it. Neal and I loved it (note the thumbs up from Neal below). Ben thought it was good and Beth thought it was tolerable. She does not like eggs, so I was happy with tolerable. In our omelets I put 2 eggs, sausage, cheese, onion, mushrooms, salt, pepper, and a dash of hot sauce. I also put dill in Neal's eggs.

Ben liked ketchup on his. :o)

This picture was taken from a bridge on top of a dam. This picture doesn't do the view justice!

I had a visitor on my sweatshirt Sunday morning. I guess this little butterfly was cold so while I was cooking our pancakes, he landed on my sweatshirt. I moved around the campsite and he stayed put. Then Ben held him for a little while, then he was passed onto our friends Lillie and Abbey, then Beth held him. After the kids held him, Neal took his turn. The butterfly really liked Neal.

He even stayed for breakfast. After he stayed about an hour with us, I guess he got warm enough and flew away.

After breakfast on Sunday, we went mountain biking. Or as Neal said "Family" mountain biking. It was all down hill. Or at least most of it. I drove the van down to a parking lot and then my friend Jackie drove me back to the camp site. We went through the woods and over logs. It was a lot of fun! The scary moment came when Beth lost her brakes on the steepest hill. She was fourth in line when we started out and ended up passing the three people in front of her. Thankfully it flattened off a little bit and her brakes kicked in just enough for her to stop. It was a very frightening ride for her! Neal has tools on his bike so he was able to fix her brakes before we continued our ride.

We had fun in the evenings sitting around the fire talking and laughing. We also played some cards by lantern light. We're very thankful for our good friends that the Lord has given us!