Fish Lake

 This last week we went camping at Fish Lake.  Nick and I both enjoy camping, but with being pregnant and babies and such over the last 10 years, we just haven't made it our first priority.  We've gone on a handful of overnight trips, but we decided that this year we would make it our family trip for the summer.  Okay, so it was only two nights, so it wasn't a long trip, but a vacation all the same.  My sister and her two kids joined us, which just added to the fun.

We got to our campsite on Thursday afternoon and my sis had already set up camp complete with canopy and tarp shelter.  It's a good thing too because it poured rain later that evening.  We had little rivers running through our camp and flooding our perfect coals in the firepit.  I was a bit worried that our whole camp experience would be a soggy one, but thankfully the showers moved on and most of our gear was still dry.

A beautiful misty morning:

We spent most of Friday down at the lake.  Nick and the kids fished.  We all played in boats and in the water.  It was perfect weather.

These photos are dedicated to my good friend, Lisa:

What a beautiful world we live in.

Friday night it rained again, but we were prepared this time (or rather, my sis was prepared, she's one wise lady).  We had a tarp all set up to pull over our heat source.  It worked beautifully, as did our dutch oven pizzas.  Yum.

The rain was short-lived this time and the kids had a grand evening romping around the hills:

 Ellie's really not upset, by the way.  Just pulling faces.
By the way, before going, we were a little worried about taking kids camping.  What could we do to entertain them?  Ya know what?  We didn't have to.  They were completely entertained and we never heard once that they didn't have anything to do.  I'm sure having cousins and spending time at the lake helped, but they were completely self entertaining.  Score.

Me and my dirty Daisy:

The boy was in boy paradise:

Entertainment for this little pea consisted of empty bottles, sticks, and rocks:

The kids played Glow Stick Hide n Seek for a good long while.  I think they would've been happy to play in the dark all night long.  It was a fun day.

Saturday morning we took our time eating breakfast and pulling up stakes.  It was sad to take down such a masterpiece of a campsite.  We spent the entire afternoon back at the lake.

Nick heading out to fish (with a helper):

By the way, no one caught any fish.  That's ok though.  What would we have done with it?

More boating.  More fishing.

This is perfection, right here (even with dirty camp feet):

I just don't think life gets any better than that.

Little D was so wasted.  She missed pretty much all her naps and finally crashed out:

We took several photos trying to get all the kids to look, but this one had to be my favorite (I especially like Everett and Maren's faces):

So my report of our first "big" campout as a family of 7?  It was awesome.  The kids were so happy.  I'm pretty sure they were more happy running around in the dirt than they were at Disneyland.  I loved being up in the mountains, breathing in fresh air.  So beautiful.  So quiet.  So peaceful.  No phones.  No computers.  No tv.  Just my family.  I could actually feel the stress of every day life creeping back into my brain as we drove back into our neighborhood.  No wonder when life gets crazy my first instinct is to run for the hills.  I think we'll be doing more campouts in the future.