Family Camping

My family loves to camp. We go every chance we get, which is not often enough. We went to Howard's Prairie Lake for Memorial Day, and boy was it cold!!! We got there at about 3pm and set up camp and it was chilly, but not too bad. We woke up the next morning to big, fluffy snowflakes floating lazily down, and it was really cold all day. My youngest daughter and her two little boys left early Saturday morning, because her oldest has asthma really bad and he was having trouble breathing. The rest of us were there for 3 days and it rained or snowed most of the time except for about 4 hours Saturday morning, which allowed me to do some camp crafts with the kids. Then it started again that afternoon.

We are a motley-looking crew, are we not? We did try a little fishing, but it was too cold and the fish weren't biting. We had good food, though! We planned a wonderful menu for the weekend, and if it had been better weather, the kids would have learned a lot about camp cooking, but under the circumstances, it was just easier for us adults to do the cooking.

The tall guy in the front right of the photo is my youngest (and tallest) son, Andy, and he is really into camping and outdoors stuff. He and I did most of the cooking. We used to camp a lot when he was a kid, and he just really gained a love for all things outdoors. He probably takes his family camping more than any of my other kids.

We were supposed to stay until Monday, but we wound up coming home on Sunday. I don't mind camping in the cold when I'm prepared for it, but we definitely were not prepared. No one, even the kids, was having fun. We spent most of our time huddled around the campfire drinking hot chocolate just to keep warm, so we decided to come home and enjoy the last day of the holiday vegging in front of the TV, watching movies. It is a really beautiful place, though, and we will go there again. We will just wait until its later in the year to go that high in the mountains.

Is that the face of pure enjoyment, or what?

Well, that's it for today. I will be back again soon. Remember...don't put all your eggs in one basket. Sometimes Mother Nature throws you a curve ball, so be ready to catch it with game plan B.  Love to all, Gramma G.