Labor Day Camping Trip

We went camping for Labor Day Weekend at Chain of Lakes State Park, about 1 hour away. We stayed Friday night and had a blast! Unfortunately we chose the 2 hottest days of the whole summer to go. It was between 95 and 98 degrees all weekend! It was sooo hot and humid and sticky that we ended up just staying 1 night instead of 2. Regardless, we had a blast. Upon arriving, we set up our tent and were soo hot we decided to check out the beach before settling down. The beach closed at sunset, so we only had a few minutes to swim on Friday night, but we had a blast!!

Beautiful sunset & Beautiful girl!

Jaxton getting ready to swim

Nate & Cooper

We went camping with several families from our ward. Here is Jaxton with one of his good friends, Gavin.

The Newhard family also came camping with us. Joey is Cooper's age and Jasline is 1 month younger than Kaylee. They are great friends.

We didn't make the boys get in their seatbelts to drive from the beach back to our campsite, just a 3 minute drive around the camp. They thought that was soo cool! They were so excited to NOT have to wear seatbelts for once!

You can't go camping without smores! Here is Cooper roasting marshmellows. He had been asking and asking and asking when it would be time to make marshmellows and chocolate. He is definitely our sugar man!

Look at him enjoy that smore!! These are unique smores because we used the Keebler cookies that have chocolate on one side and cookie on the other. So we put our roasted marshmellow between the chocolate side of 2 cookies and squished it together. It was a little less messy than traditional smores and the kids loved them! And so did I! Yum!

Jaxton, eating his smore!

Here we are in the tent, getting ready to settle down for the night. It was still like 80 or 90 degrees when we were ready for bed, so just a little bit miserable. I assumed it would get cold at night so all I packed were warm footsie jammies for wintertime. Needless to say we couldn't dress them in those. So they slept in an extra pair of clothes. The boys had a very hard time relaxing and falling asleep. They were just wired with excitement to be sleeping in a tent, after just eating several sugar filled smores!! So bedtime was tricky. But after we all got cozy together watching the movie Incredibles, we all fell asleep about 12:30 in the morning!

Cooper climbed into bed with Nate in the middle of the night and got cozy with us. He is one boy that loves to cuddle. Jaxton woke up super early, as soon as it was beginning to get light out. He was up and ready to go out and play! I have no idea what time it was, but he definitely got very little sleep! Ohhh the excitement of camping!!

Kaylee Girl had a great time! Of course I had no idea how she would do being out of her element, but nothing seemed to phase her at all. She slept in her t-shirt and diaper since it was scorching hot, and I tried getting her to sleep by rocking her, nursing her in the dark outside. But she just squirrmed and squirrmed. At home I just lay her down, so thats what I tried next. And believe it or not, she put herself to sleep. She somehow felt right at home. She woke up one time (just like she does at home) and slept in till probably 8:00am! I was amazed! She got pretty sweaty, but she never complained. She is such a happy go-lucky girl and just goes with the flow! What an angel!

The families we went camping with were the Newhards, the Alberts, the Maguires, the Daytons, and the Grahams. Here are some of the kids eating a delicious blueberry pancake breakfast together: Jaxton, Gavin, Haley, and Cooper.

After breakfast we brushed teeth outside and tried to clean up a bit. The boys thought that was pretty funny to brush teeth outside. They couldn't believe that I told them it was ok to spit in the grass! Usually spitting is a no-no! They loved that!

After breakfast we decided to take a venture on a boat. Since I couldn't help to row with holding Kaylee too, we got a boat that Nate could row by himself. The boys had been asking and asking when we could ride on a boat, so this was pretty exciting! Below, the boys are waiting for Dad to pay for the boat rental. Jaxton had found a pokey ball in the dirt that reminded him of the Dr. Suess movie, Horton Hears a Who. The elephant had one of those things in the movie. So he saved it and brought it home with him!

The boat ride was so much fun! It was about 80 degrees by 9:00 in the morning as we set sail and we couldn't have asked for a more beautiful clear day on a picture perfect lake setting.

Mr. Muscle Man

After our boat ride, we went back to the beach to swim again. This time Kaylee got to swim too and experience the sand, which she loved!

It was a great camping trip. Now we are more stocked up with supplies for future camping trips and hopefully we can go more often. The more we go camping the better our nights will be I'm sure. It was great family time, just being together. Cooper told me that one of his most favorite parts of camping was the flashlights. He loved carrying around his own flashlight in the dark and running around with his friends shining his flashlight all around! It will be a fun memory for the kiddos!