Friday, September 30, 2016

Keeping Up With...Family (Weekly Wrap 10/14 - 10/20 - Part 1)

Our camping trip was so much fun that it was a lot of writing to recap it.  I'm doing Friday and Saturday in this post along with a photo dump of those two days.  Then I'll do Sunday thru Thursday in Part 2 tomorrow.  Enjoy!!

Friday (10/14) AJ and Daniel had the day off from school for teacher in-services.  We decided to keep Zak home again just to be safe.  We were heading out for a weekend camping trip later today.  Our goal was to get on the road as soon as we could, but we still had most of our packing to do and I had to teach my Zumba class in the morning.  We got everything done and finally hit the road to Big Prairie around 2:15.  We got to Whispering Hills Jellystone Park around 4:00 and started to set up our tent for the weekend.  The park is awesome!!  Our site was right next to the play ground so the boys played there while we set up camp.

When we were all set up, we headed down to the camp store where they had two large jumping pillows for the kids to play on.  The boys had a blast jumping!!  We stopped them for a quick pizza dinner from the cafe and then they jumped until it closed at dark.  We headed back to our site which was right across the street from our friends' site.  They had a fire going so we joined them for some drinks, smores and relaxing around the fire.  The boys and about 4 other kids played on the play ground in the dark.  It was awesome!!

The only downside of the day was that it got very cold at night!  It went all the way down to 38 degrees over night.  That is really cold when you're in a tent!  We did our best to bundle up and had tons of extra blankets.  AJ and Daniel slept fine, the cold didn't bother them at all.  Zak woke up a few times and ended up in bed with us.  Adrian and I didn't sleep well at all.  But we survived and I kind of feel like a bad ass for camping in temps that cold!

Saturday (10/15) everyone slept in until after 8am!!  As soon as the boys woke up they were back on the play ground with their friends running around and having fun.  At 10am they went on a wagon ride to a magical pumpkin field.  They planted magic seeds, watered them with magic juice and went on a 20 minute wagon ride around the camp ground.  They came back to the magic field and a pumpkin had grown!  They were all SO excited!

After the wagon ride the boys did some more jumping and then went to play mini golf and play on the other play ground at the camp ground.  They played until lunch time when we started a fire and cooked hot dogs and sausages over it.  AJ had fun helping make the fire and cook the food, he was working on a Boy Scout badge.  After lunch we headed into the camp ground's corn maze.  We found our way thru and found most of the answers to the crossword puzzle in under an hour.  We went back to camp and rested up for the rest of the activities.

In the afternoon the camp ground had a parade of costumes with Yogi Bear leading the parade.  The kids decided they didn't want to walk in it so we just watched instead.  Then we headed out to trick or treat around the camp ground.  The kids had a great time dressed up as Skylanders from Swap Force.  They wore their original costumes - Wash Buckler (AJ), Stink Bomb (Daniel) & Night Shift (Zak) - for today but they can "swap" their costumes as well.  They want to do that the next time we go out.  We got tons of candy & had a fun time checking out all the decorated camp sites.

After all of that excitement we were all pretty wiped out.  We cooked dinner again over the fire (more hot dogs and sausage).  We went on a short nature walk to watch the amazing full moon.  We went over to our friends' trailer for some wine, moonshine, smores & roasted marshmallows.  The boys played for a while on the play ground and when they ran out of steam we let them play on their tablets until they fell asleep in the tent.  It was a fantastic night to sleep outside - it was in the high 50's.  Way better than last night!!  And we all got a better night's sleep!

As promised, the photo dump of those two days:
The boys on the swing near our camp site
Our view from our "back yard"

AJ & Dad setting up the tent
Jumping Fun!
Roasting marshmallows
Wagon ride to the magical pumpkin patch
Pumpkins!
Trick or Treat!
Beautiful fire on night 2
Zak enjoying some mini golf
Another gorgeous view
Mining for gold (we didn't find any)

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