Wall Lake

Well hello! 

It has been a few years since my last post.  It's actually been 4 years to the date.  Crazy! Last week I thought I would read my old posts and it re-motivated me to start up again.The kids looked at the pictures while I read the posts and they thought it was so much fun.  They laughed and "oh'd" and "ah'd" at all the right places and made me think, "I should do that again." So, here I go again. 😉

Rich and I decided to take the kids on a backpacking trip. Knowing that they couldn't do too big of a hike, we went to Wall Lake.  It is a great hike for kids.  It is only one mile hike from the parking lot.  It was all uphill, but super gradual so nobody noticed. 

Here are the kids, packing in all their stuff. (If only!) 

 And here is Rich packing in only his stuff.  💪😂

 Here I am. Sophia was my photographer in this one.  She is so great!

This is the campsite that Max chose.  It was a great spot, away from all other sites and with some fire wood already stacked up.  Max felt so proud of himself and always asked Rich, "Wasn't that a great campsite?" I think he literally asked him that a hundred times.  Sometimes even now (weeks later) he will say, "Remember that campsite? Wasn't that a great spot?"

Rich packed in all his fishing supplies and we were able to fish a couple times.  He caught this trout on his second cast in.  It is always so fun for the kids to catch a fish. (Please note Sophia's face in this picture.)

Sophia and Max both held it while it was squirming around but Owen would not touch it.  He was just fine looking at it, thank you very much.  When Rich killed it by hitting it on a rock, all the kids were horrified.  Sophia's exact words were, "That must have hurt so much!"  My heart broke a little bit for the fish after that. We took it back to the campsite and Rich cooked it over the fire.  Max loved it.  I can't remember if Owen tried it, but Sophia and I agreed that it tastes like it smells, fishy.

This was the first long camping trip we took.  We spent two nights here and the thing I didn't really realize is how much down time there is.  I packed a couple books for the kids, but when I wasn't reading to them I was bored out of my mind.  I brought Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to read to Sophia, and a Nate the Great book for Max.  He's not super interested in stories though so he would listen politely (or sometimes not so politely), just waiting until the chapter was over.  Reading Harry Potter to Sophia was actually one of my favorite memories of the trip. But, next time I will plan a few more activities for the day.  

One thing we decided to do was build "fairy houses".  It was actually pretty fun seeing what everyone came up with.  

Here is Max and Rich's masterpiece. I love the walkway.

Here is mine.  It doesn't look like much, but the idea is that the stump is a part of the house.

And here is Sophia's.  She worked on it for a really long time.  When we tried to get her to leave to go on a hike (because the rest of us were finished and bored), she was so upset.  As soon as we got back, she continued working on it.  Her fairy house came with a TV and table.  The two most important pieces of furniture, I guess. 

I should have taken a picture of Owens, but I will paint you a word picture.  Imagine a pile of dirt.  That's what it looked like. It was funny watching him build it.  He would find rocks and leaves that were important pieces of his fairy house and would then cover them with dirt.  Ha!

This girl... We were all pretty dirty, but she was out of control! I love it.

Here is the hike we went on.  We got rained on so it got cut short, much to Sophia's delight.  She had a fairy house to build, after all.  The boys did great hiking so much.

The kids wanted lots of stories.  Scary stories.  If it wasn't scary, it wasn't worth telling.  Rich and I were exhausted from telling them.  There are only so many endings I could come up with that are scary but not traumatizing.  

It got really cold at night. I was actually the only warm one.  (Mom guilt! 😬) The kids had their big feather blankets and those just weren't cutting it.  I tried having them sleep close together so they could share their blankets, but they would be too squirmy to keep them on.  Rich shared his sleeping bag with Max, and Sophia and Owen ended up sharing their two down blankets and that seemed to keep everyone but Rich warm.  We ended up putting the cover on the tent and then we were able to stay much warmer.  

I am really glad we went on this trip.  I love creating memories with the kids.  Next time we will do things differently, but it was a great trip, all things considered.  I hope we can go again next year.