Camping Highlights

So we made it through the weekend! But boy is my house suffering today!! After more than a week of house guests, me spending half that time laying around on pain killers, a rush of a day of packing for a camping trip, three days in the great outdoors, and then getting home and dumping everything just inside the back door last night, it's safe to say this place is a wreck! We at least emptied the car last night, but only really unpacked the cooler and anything we needed to get the kids to bed last night. I did manage to gather most of the laundry together and so I really should get on that. We still have piles of stuff everywhere and our tubs of camping "kitchen" stuff and food are sitting in the kitchen. I told Savannah she could just go digging in there for a snack this morning. Her first choice was of course marshmallows, but after that request was denied, you know what she picked? A hot dog bun. She dug past the applesauce, the crackers, the bagels, the fig newtons, even the pudding snacks, and wanted a plain hot dog bun. Okay...

Well, since I should really be cleaning and unpacking instead of blogging, I should stop wasting even more time babbling like I do and just get to the trip.
We had a great time! We have our first successful Michigan camping trip under our belts. The weather was awesome... sunny and 80. I didn't know it was going to be so nice. It had been pouring and gloomy for almost two weeks before that, and the weather report said sun, but I was still doubtful. We could have spent both days down in the sun and sand at the lake if I would have been better prepared for more summer weather! Van Buren was great, we had nice big campsites. They were great, except for that fact that we were right next to a mini-playground with swings and that was definitely the gathering spot for every kid in the campground between the ages of 4 and 14 between the hours of 7am and 10pm, the most popular hang out time being from after dinner until after 9 at night. Which was great for putting our babies to bed in our tents, let me tell you! (if you can't hear the sarcasm in my voice, believe me... it's there!) Those kids were so loud and obnoxious, screaming and yelling, climbing trees right over our tents and even running through our campsite. This campground was packed with kids! At least Savannah made lots of friends for the weekend. I have honestly never seen so many families with kids camping, and we have been to many very family friendly campgrounds. Needless to say, we were happy to have the 10pm quiet time roll around. We had a couple of great campfires, played some games, and had our fill of s'mores. The kids did great. Savannah loves camping! When we took the car into town to go up to South Haven, and when we stopped at a Wal-Mart for a couple of forgotten items, she would ask us every half-hour or so, "are we still camping?". Sawyer did pretty good for his first time as a camper. He was a little cranky and he didn't sleep all that well the first night (or a couple of nights before that at home, which didn't help), but that was mostly because he had some pretty good flare-ups with his eczema and so I think he was kind of irritable from that. But he had fun being outside. He loves to get in the dirt!


These were the only two ways to keep the little monster contained...
We mostly used The Supergate and then we gave Porter's Bumbo seat a try.






We had brought his walker for him to eat in and for when we wanted to keep him clean(er), but he wasn't too happy being cooped up in that. He wanted to be down on the ground with his toys in the dirt.

And when we hit the beach, and let him down in the sand, he was in heaven!! He would just crawl around plowing his hands through the sand like a bulldozer, laughing the whole while. He loved it when I would bury his feet and he could dig and wiggle them out. Pretty cute! Savannah of course loved the water, she could stay out there jumping the waves all day.















She wrote her name in the sand...














And here are a couple more cute shots of the kids...














Well, I have a ton more pictures. I filled up our camera's memory card for the first time on one single trip. I haven't gone through and edited or cropped any yet, but I'll get around to that one of these next evenings and I'll get them all up on Shutterfly so you can check them out and order prints if you want any. Also, Nicole got some great shots (she is, after all the photographer... I'm almost embarrassed to send you over to look at her pics compared to mine) and they're on her page today so you can check those out if your interested. She's giving me a disk with all hers on there (more of our family and the kids than she posted on her blog) so I will add those to the Shutterfly album too and you can see all of them.

Allright...
I must get some work done around here.
Hope you all had a great weekend!

p.s.
Happy belated to both Heidi and Holly!! We were thinking of you both and missing you aroung the campfire!