mountain camping: part 2

After a {somewhat} restful night's sleep, I just HAD to open the trunk up at 6 am. I had been...well, holding it in...all night because I knew if I opened the trunk, C would wake up and not go back to sleep. Haha...it actually wasn't so bad. But at 6 I NEEDED OUT. Sure enough, when I returned, her little head of messy blonde hair sat straight up and she was wide awake. We watched the sunrise over the mountains while we snuggled in our dozens of blankets. 

Eventually we heard Talmage's voice from the tent, excitingly saying things like: "Look! It's light outside! Can we go out? Can we go fishing? What are we going to eat?!"

We had ourselves a breakfast of oatmeal, yogurt, and hot chocolate. Yum!

Jonathan watched that lake intently...I knew exactly what was going through HIS mind! ;)

We walked down to the lake and got right to business. While the boys took turns holding the fishing pole, Charlotte pretended to catch fishies in her net.

 ...and eventually her face.

Ohhh....these two. Their cuteness kills me sometimes and I can hardly stand it. You can really see how much alike they look in these pictures. People often ask me if they are twins, even though they're 22 months apart. 

 This guy was in heaven, even if it was just little fish that he was snagging. On a side note, Jonathan has started a fly fishing group at the hospital. He's had a few patients participate and he's told me it's been pretty therapeutic for them. But- mental patient or not- everyone just needs to go fishing sometimes. It's good for the soul!

To wear the kids out for naps, we decided to go for a walk through the woods and see what we could find. We came upon a gorgeous mossy clearing with a few enormous pine trees.

 After our stroll through the woody trails, we had a picnic lunch by the lake. I didn't get any pictures...probably because we were all just SO HUNGRY and only wanted to eat :D Can I just say that lunchables and Sunny-D juice taste REALLY good when you're camping? I got the lunchables for the kids and sandwich subs for Jonathan and I, but we all sort of traded our food around. We brought so much food with us, oh my gosh... it turned out to be a good thing though :)

Our plan worked! Those kiddos were WORN OUT by naptime and had no problem falling asleep. Jonathan and I treated this rare quiet time as a sort of date. We cuddled by the lake, went fishing some more, and enjoyed a riveting game of Dominion.

We were hoping that as the day progressed, the heat would warm up the shallow parts of the lake for swimming. But...Jonathan tested it out and it was still very cold. The kids wanted to play in the water more than anything so we packed up camp and headed down the mountain, where it was much warmer. The weather was perfectly warm at our campsite, but not quite HOT. 

We had debated staying another night at this awesome spot, but there is such a thing as TOO much fun, folks. I could already tell the kids were getting restless and out of control. We decided it was best to leave while we were all still in high spirits :) Besides, we had done SO much in just a day and a half, and definitely got that camping itch scratched :)

Part 3 to come!