Group Camping

Growing up  camped all the time with my family. I loved every single thing about it. The card playing, hiking, swimming, sleeping together in a tent, late nights around the fire pit, and fun meals together. In college I started backpacking in college and truly found my favorite form of camping. Adam and I did a lot of backpacking pre-kid and even took Charlie on a backpacking trip when I was pregnant with Kate. Once Kate was born we started camping each summer. The kids loved it as did I. Adam seem less than convinced that camping with a young family was fun. My good friend Tanya said time and time again, "Camping with a group is way different and better than camping with just your kids." So with some convincing I managed to get Adam onboard with not one but TWO group camping trips this past summer/fall. And we all loved every minute of each trip. These pictures are of a two night camping trip to Calaveras Big Trees. We went with something like 7-8 families and at one point I believe there were 18-19 kids running around in a pack....the way life should be.

The fire pit was huge and awesome. It was a gathering point for breakfast, dinner, and post dinner fun!

 Two of my great friends Tanja and Debbie

 This is a good picture of what time around the campsite looked like. The women chatting, some people  played music on and off, and the kids ran around free.

The boys were in stick heaven...and surprisingly no one got hurt.

Kate had her best friend in the whole wide world. These two frolicked around in their own magical world.

 Alex did amazingly well the whole time. Played wonderfully, followed around the big kids, slept great, and was cheerful every minute

 Most of the kids...

How sweet...

We had a great group hike through Calaveras Big Trees which involved lots of climbing!

 One of our few family pictures of the whole crew

 Alex in absolute heaven in the water

 Charlie was wonderful the whole weekend. He had just cut his leg and so was the only kid/adult that couldn't go swimming. He truly made the best of it never once complaining or feeling sorry for himself. 

 Kate was one of the only kids that swam across this entire lake and back without any floating devices. And she definitely enjoying water playing time with both Richard and as you can see here with Adam.

Adam spending time with his baby boy.

One of the million things I love about camping is the endless opportunities to just be with your children. No phones, work, distractions....just lots of time for conversations and cuddles.

Morning hellos amongst friends.

 She may love pink and at times play with dolls but there is nothing girly girl about this camper. She spent most of her time running with the boys, finding critters and playing in the dirt.

All in all a great place for a large group to camp. We had the whole place, including an area to cook and bathrooms and showers to ourselves... well we shared with bees.

 And a 5 minute drive away we had this small, safe, and clean lake to play in.

A few days ago Kate was recovering from a 24 hour fever and we sat and read book after book together. After we exhausted our favorite stack of children's books we moved onto the few family books we have made. Kate enjoyed the blog book the most. I printed the first year of my blog which included over 100 pages of writing and pictures. It was so incredibly fun to read things I wrote 4 years ago. I was so inspired that I went ahead and put together my second year of blogging into a book and should get that in the mail in the next few weeks. And it reminded me that I need to keep writing. Not only so my 5 followers can actually know what is going on in my life but so I have a written account of the ups and downs of mothering and life.
So it has been three months I believe since my last post. I currently don't have a camera (wow, adam that would be a great xmas present for your amazing wife!) and therefore rely on iphone pictures to capture my moments. I am hardly on our family computer these days since I wait until post bedtime and get on my work computer nightly. But here goes. I will try to post weekly so in 4 years when alex is sick and reading family blog books on the couch with me he doesn't look up to me with his sweet brown eyes and say, "Mommy, why did't you write about me?"

So let's start with Alex. He is 18 months and just bursting with awesomeness. Really. He is a perfect combination of Kate and Charlie. He is focused, sporty and smart like Charlie, and full of life, silliness, dance moves, and a calm demeanor like Kate. He adores us all. He walks around saying Love you Mommy, Love you Dardee and Date. He ran up to me last week and said, "snuggle you mommy". He talks up a storm. The past month he has been putting 3 and 4 words together: Play spy Kate Please. Spies is a wonderful game that Charlie made up that all three kids play together daily. I love it. Charlie and Kate hide somewhere and alex looks everywhere to find them. When he finds them they shriek and race to another spot as Alex screams in delight after them. When Charlie walks in from school Alex smiles big and says: spies?
Charlie adores his Pa too. My dad spends 5 hours every Wednesday fully focused on Alex. They practice soccer, tennis, build with blocks, play puzzles, and do art. One Wednesday alex hurt his little finger and my dad gave him love and a bandaid. Now every time anyone of us gets hurt Alex says, PA!
Last night Alex had his first swim lesson. We were going to wait until he was closer to 3 but recently we went to my friend Debbie's house and Alex went nuts in the hot tub. He was so excited that Adam agreed to sign him up. The lesson was fantastic. Alex was kicking his feet, smiling and laughing the whole time and let us dunk him a few times.

A few of his favorite things...pumpkins.

Three days a week he is at Charlie's tennis lessons. He usually runs into his biggest fan Devin and they end up playing chase and tennis together. If Devin isn't there I get my workout by chasing him off the courts and out of the street while every mother says how adorable he is.....sure super cute when he isn't yours to chase around.

The days of Alex happily sitting in my ergo or stroller are far over. He loves to ride his tricycle, follow the big kids around, and say hi to the goats. We are closer and closer to him being able to follow outside rules about safety but not there yet.

And he takes eating very seriously. He eats almost everything we feed him and since he eats all day long we try to keep it whole foods. He eats lots of fruit, soups,  and nuts!