4th of July camping

Sunday, 6/30/13

We woke up from our adult camping night and made the executive (that was tough ;) decision to pull the campers to Jakway Park for the week of the 4th and camp the whole week. We packed up (didn't take much!), Maggie & I hopped on our bikes and the gang drove up in a caravan to Aurora. We actually ended up extending our 'vacation' by a few hours as Jeanette went to Francois' house to pick up the girls for us :) soooooooooo nice. 

Needless to say I wasn't quite prepared for a week worth of camping...but I arranged Tuesday to be the day I went home to 'catch-up' (laundry, store-run, etc) and it worked out just fine. I do know what I would do differently next time (bring the baby pool up the first day, make a clothes line, etc. But all in all we had a fabulous time and I did not take near enough pictures! The little girls especially were very confused as to why we kept camping without Dad around during the day :) but they got the hang of it.

Here we are on Monday, July 1st. It was such a gorgeous week to camp! Beautiful out, not too hot, not too cold, we were protected by the wind... perfect. Had to take a picture of our lunch :)

Here we were LAST year over the 4th.. they ALL look little!

As I mentioned before, I did not take near enough pictures. This is Wednesdasy, July 3rd after dinner... Lydia riding on Sasquatch ;)

I love this picture of both of them :)

This was the 'start' of LeaAnn wearing her bathing suit as clothes :)

Working on painting our nails for the 4th :)

Playing ball

Then 'King Dad' took over and all the kids in the campground followed him ;) All the parents were beginning to love our camping circle.

The magic began! We had been scheming this for a while now. The city of Winthrop owns this blow up screen, Maggie & Fred bought a projector last year so we decided that the night before the 4th we'd put on a show :)

We were the talk of the campground!

How cool is this?!?

Kyle made sure that Sasquatch was going to help out ;)

ALL the kids in the campground joined us :) We ended up watching Despicable Me b/c the DM2 was coming out the very next day.

See Grue? Love him :)

Wouldn't be complete without popcorn..

Every parent loved us ... free babysitting (again) for them! ;) We are excited to show a movie again this fall when it starts to get darker just a little bit earlier. We called it quits at 10:15 and could not start until 9:00pm.

And here we are 4th of July morning! The Hogan's were the first to go ... Independence parade starts at 9am! Don't they look beautiful??

We made it (barely) to Troy Mills. The 10:00am start time works well for us so the little two can still have a nap in the afternoon. Here we are: Lauren 8-2mo, Lindsay 6-10mo, Lydia 3-7mo & LeaAnn 2-4mo

2012... Look how little they are!!! Scary.  And oh so similar ;) LeaAnn is still trying to get out of the picture!

Caught this one on Chris' phone :)

Kading Kress :) she has the most gorgeous eyes!

We sat with Kenny, Linda & Andrea (Smith) Cook...

Look at that mane of hair! :D

I did not take many pics during the parade, I decided I wanted to enjoy one for once ;) And it's a good thing I didn't b/c we got soaked!!! I should say Chris, Lydia & LeaAnn got soaked. A whole bucket full of water just dropped right over their heads. It felt great, but they were NOT happy.  There were lots of water guns and we heard the whole way home, "Not like my dress wet! Not like my dress wet!" :D

We let the kids stay up to 'watch' Aurora's fireworks from a gravel road, which turned out to be more of a disasters than it was worth. Learning curve... it's better to be up-close and personal if all the kids are to be entertained. :)
Friday night the kids zonked early and we had another fun-filled adult night, we played bean bags, Fred's sisters came to visit us, we danced, .. Jayme pulled Maggie in the Burley :) Lots of fun, made up for the 4th for me :)
We headed home on Saturday so we could pack on Sunday and leave on Monday for Ohio!!! Never a dull moment and wouldn't have it any other way.