Camping!

So last Labor Day weekend, we tried to camp at Battleground Lake State Park.  Well.... We did camp, but only for one night because of torrential rains.  We had rivers running through our campsite and a lake in our tent and no more dry clothes by lunchtime on Saturday. But this year, our Labor Day weekend camp-out was a success, Friday through Monday!

Jack loves to have his picture taken.  Here he is, right after we got to our campsite. He looked around for a good place to pose (this is the pole that you can use to keep food out of the reach of animals) and said, "Here Mom.  Take my picture!" He loves his Dora backpack...

Mike loved his new camping stove! This is the first night- hamburgers. Yum! He also successfully cooked eggs, pancakes and chilli (that I made at home and froze for our trip).

We also used the campfire quite a bit for cooking. Of course, we had s'mores but we also made hot dogs and biscuits on a stick!

Biscuits on a stick were a bit doughy, but were pretty good if you cooked them on a low flame for a long time.  Jonah's was mostly dough, since he thinks he can cook over smoke.

The kids and I thought this video was pretty funny.  Hope you enjoy it! Oh, at the beginning, Jack is saying, "Where's stick? Where's stick? Where's stick that I found?" And later, near the end of the video, he says, "Can you take a picture of me?" You should be able to understand the rest! :)

Campfire! from Julie Tull on Vimeo.

Our routine.  Either Mike or I wash the dishes, but the kids bring the dirty dishes down and the clean dishes back to the table. In this picture, Mike is washing the dishes (obviously!) and the kiddos are waiting for clean dishes.

Saturday afternoon was spent at the lake since it was warm enough to play in the water.
Mike and Paige loved playing on a log out in the water.  They would balance for a while and then jump off.

Mike, Paige and Jonah built this sandcastle while Jack and I sat nearby.

Here is Jack again posing for another picture.

And here is Jack sleeping on my lap at the beach.  He just laid down in my lap and fell asleep for an hour or so.  I loved this! I miss holding my sleeping babies.  They are so sweet!

We spent most of Sunday geocaching.  Here was one of their finds! Jack had to use the bathroom, so we missed out on finding this one.  But it was a good thing.  Mike, Paige and Jonah got entangled in a swarm of bees and Jonah (of course!) got stung- proving that he does in fact get stung by a bee every time he goes camping.  Poor kid.

Monday morning we found a few more caches in Battleground park.

Here is Jack again, posing.

And Mike, Paige and Jonah posing in front of their earth cache.  An earth cache is like a geocache in that you find it with the help of a GPS, but there isn't a box to open or anything.  It is a good way to find cool things, like this lava rock.  This earth cache had a little lesson with it, comparing the weight of lava rocks to regular rocks. Oh, if you didn't know, Battleground lake is in the crater of an old volcano.  The water is slightly warm (74 degrees F or so) because of the lava tubes underneath.

On the way home on Monday (Well, not exactly on the way home...) we went to the "Ape Cave." It is an underground lava tube from an eruption of Mt. St. Helens.  Really cool, really cold and really fun for us.  Jonah was soooo cute.  He was walking very slowly with his headlight pointing down, searching for mice, even dead ones.  He never found any... I thought the kids would be afraid with it being so dark in there, but they weren't. I think it was like being in a Scooby Doo movie for them.  They loved it! 

The kids were all sad to go home. I think that is proof of a great camping trip!