Our very favorite adventure this fall was a weekend camping trip to Lake Livingston State Park. We loved camping so much this summer, but it was too stinking hot out to camp much in Texas so we wanted to give fall camping a try when the weather was a little cooler.
Boy howdy, was it cooler!!! The kind of cold where you see your breath and you can't feel your toes.
We planned a trip for Halloween weekend and I was really glad to be away from the house for that holiday. It's not that I am opposed to Halloween, there are just a lot of things about it that I don't like. Like trying to wrangle up costumes for 6 kids, and all that scary stuff that freaks my kids out, and people ringing my doorbell for several hours in a row, and all the candy in the house, and .......well, anyway, its not my favorite. So we got to skip it.
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| The Woods, the Solbergs, and two random white kids! |
Joining us on our camping adventure was the Solberg Family. Lauree Solberg is one of my dearest friends.We traveled with the Solberg's and their oldest son Cade, to China to bring home Grace and their daughter, Jenna. Since that trip they have also adopted Chloe and Luke from DRCongo. Their family looks just like out family and my kids adore their kids. It's just like having cousins living right in our neighborhood.
So the weather reports said it would be clear and cool. But I didn't catch the part about it being freeze-my-tail-off-cold. And we weren't exactly prepared for it. We packed sweatshirt jackets, not winter parkas with coats and gloves. We had blankets for our air mattresses, but not sleeping bags rated to 30 below (or electric blankets, like Lauree brought).
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| Luke and Louise were cold! |
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| Kat was cold! |
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| JoJo was cold! |
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Until he found a snake!
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| Grace was CRAZY cold! |
But in spite of the cold, it was a BLAST!!! Our kids were in heaven. We had the perfect camp site. We shared a fire pit and we backed up right into the woods. There was a giant pile of downed trees to climb, bugs to dig up, flowers to pick, kindling to collect, and dirt to roll around in!
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| Crafts in the woods with Chloe, Luke, Grace, and Jenna. |
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| There are the two cutest....... |
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| ......little tree huggers I know! |
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| More craft time with Haven, Katriel, and Manny. |
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| Don't mess with Grace, she has a big stick! |
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| And a little flower! |
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| It was pretty cool having the kids cook their own dinner! |
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| Luke, Manny, Haven, and Jenna are hungry! |
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| Climbing our mountain of logs. Yes, Louise is barefoot and she was for most of the weekend. That's just how Louise rolls! |
We went on a long nature hike, did crafts with the park rangers, drank gallons of hot chocolate, and roasted dozens of marshmallows.
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| Ready for our nature walk. It was a great success. No one was lost and no one got eaten by a snake! |
But mostly, we did nothing at all. The kids played and the grownups chatted. The phone didn't ring, the TV wasn't on, the computer was unplugged. Even my phone didn't get a signal.
Yes, it was cold (so cold that I didn't change my clothes for 3 days because the thought of being naked sent me into a panic). Yes, you could see your breath pretty much every minute of the trip, both inside and outside the tent, but what an amazing weekend it was to stop and take a breath!!!
Thank you Solberg's for our family weekend. JoJo wants to know when we're going again. We all look forward to many more trips with you guys!
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| I LOVE NATURE!!! |
