Our yearly camping trip

I love, Love, LOVE the school schedule that the boys have here in Georgia. Right when I am starting to feel totally overwhelmed with our schedules, the boys get a week long break and we get to just hang around and do what we want. They are on their fall break this week and it is so nice to just focus on the house and maybe even some organization.

We have gone on a camping trip in Oct. ever year that we have  been in GA I think. This past weekend we went camping on a lake in Augusta. We were planning on leaving on Friday when the boys got home from school since they got out at 12:00. The problem was, I had no interest or time to plan the trip before Friday and when you are going camping there is a lot to plan. So on Friday morning, I planned a little and did a lot of hoping and just threw in what I had as I thought of it. We finally left home about 4pm. Luckily Augusta is only 2 hours away, but we still had to do a lot of the tent pitching in the dark. The boys did a great job helping Steve and we eventually did get to bed.


Alex watching the tent crew


The next morning we woke up to this scene taken from our campsite:


It was such a beautiful area! and especially at this time of year when the weather has cooled off a little and a lot of the nasty bugs have started to go away.The lake was huge and just such a beautiful scene. The boys enjoyed playing around the water and the woods.
 

 

During the day, Steve took the boys on a canoe ride on the water two at a time




Of course Alex stayed safely on the shore with Mommy.


They also went fishing right by our campsite one day.

And Steve always has to have a little relaxation time with all of the boys scratching his back or rubbing his head. He made up a very entertaining points game this time.

We even got the blessing of a full moon. It was so beautiful!

 

One night we were able to get Alex to sleep by himself, so we got to sit around the fire and listen to some of Steve's campfire stories. And the boys love his stories!

Speaking of Alex and his sleep, boy is this boy difficult when it comes to that. He cannot sleep if there is any noise around him. He just has to know what is going on and sits up and looks around with any sound. As you can imagine, this made camping a bit difficult with him. He had to wait and go to bed when I was ready to lay down most night. And during his naps, we had to send the boys out into the woods to play so he could sleep. Once or twice he fell asleep in the car and I was able to leave him in there for an hour or so without us having to tiptoe around the camp. Ridiculous. I know.
He did fall asleep in his stroller on the morning we were packing up. I gave him his binky and blanket and ignored him for long enough and he slept for maybe half an hour. A real miracle.

 

Now I do need to give myself a pat on the back really quick here. As most of you know, I Love to go to garage sales. I love to see what unique things people are getting rid of, or what kind of treasures I can find. I also LOVE getting a good deal. Well, some of those great garage sale purchases were really helpful on this camping trip. I found this collapsible 5 gallon water container for $2 at a garage sale last year. At our campsite there was no running water, so I would go a mile to the RV site in the morning and fill up my water jug and it worked out great. We used it to wash hands, get a drink, brush teeth, etc. It was perfect.

 

 With every seat in the van now full, it is impossible to get us all, plus three days worth of camping supplies in the car. At one point I found this rooftop carrier thingy to carry some of our extra junk. Steve strapped it to the top, and put as much stuff as we could in it and away we went. Well worth the $20 I spent!

I do need to apologize to Alicia for the lack of an eggs-in-a-frame picture, but rest assured we had our fair share. As well as lots of other delicious camp food. I swear 90% of our camping trip is spent, cooking, eating and cleaning up. We love it though.

And we will look forward to our next camping trip.

What I learned this week

Wow, it has been a great week of learning for me, and I love the things I have learned,  now I just need to implement them. I have been a little stressed with my Young Women calling lately. I felt like we had everything under control and moving along, and then things started changing, and people were getting moved to other callings and I felt like it was all falling apart. After a lot of thought, prayer, and long talks with people with great ideas, I am so excited about the changes now. I have gained a stronger testimony that the Lord cares very much what happens in the Statesboro Ward Young Womens and if I will just trust Him it will all work out.

I absolutely LOVED Conference this weekend. Especially both sessions on Saturday. I felt the Spirit so strongly and had great ideas come to my mind and many reassuring things said. Of course that is probably because of the above paragraph, but I just really loved it.
Because of this new very addicting website called Pintrest, I planned ahead and made Conference more enjoyable for the boys too. They each got a Conference basket with bingo, candy, hot chocolate, a new pen, a small notebook, and some conference activities in them. They enjoyed them and were able to stay a little quieter during the Sunday morning session. Thank you Pintrest.

Last night, it got down to 41 degrees here! Woohoo, I love the fall weather. I am so thrilled that it is here. Hopefully we won't have anymore hot humid days in 2011. I would Love it. Anyway, Steve decided it was time to do some fun "macho" activity with the boys, so they all slept on the trampoline. It is so funny because Steve goes to great lengths to make sure he is comfortable when he sleeps. So, he proceeded to pull a mattress out to the trampoline to sleep with the boys. Now we all know what happens when you sleep on the trampoline right? Everyone slides to the heaviest point. So, I guess all the boys would just slide to the mattress that Steve was on. Well, around 4am Steve retreated and came to bed with me. I guess it was super cold, the dew was getting everything wet and he was ready for some good sleep. Brandon eventually came in too,  but the other boys held out until the morning. And then they proceeded to jump with the mattress and blankets and sleeping bags and pillows all day long. Oh the joys of the trampoline.
                              

                                     

  We also had our annual fall festival at the school on Friday night. We always go and spend money on junk, but I am happy because it goes back to the school. Here are Alexander and Steve as we were leaving.
                             

And today, while I was taking advantage of having Steve around to help, I got out my sewing machine and I was hemming table clothes for YW that have been on a six month to do list. During that time, Steve was in charge of the baby boy. Can you guess what he did to keep him happy?
                             

Sad Loss

You see this beautiful red lawn mower that has been put to very good use on our property.

Well, it is no longer running. :-( Steve has been sooooo busy with school lately, and I really enjoy cutting the grass every once in a while. Since this week wasn't too hot and the grass was overgrown, especially in the back, I decided I would do Steve a favor and cut it. As I was working on the backyard just finishing the area that grows the most, the mower just stopped. No sputtering, no signs it just quite. When we looked at it later we discovered that it had no oil, and apparently engines don't like to run without oil. It had been leaking oil pretty bad for a while now and Steve always checks the oil when he mows, but since I was just filling in, I did not think to do that and now we have almost 1 acre of grass and no mower. I will let you know what we decide to do.

This one is just for fun.