I hope all my American friends had a happy and safe 4th of July! We had a fun, long holiday weekend - after spending all day yesterday unpacking and doing laundry (still so much to do) I decided I needed to take a break and do a little blog update. ***WARNING - it's a long post!
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We left on Wednesday and headed out to the lake - one I hadn't been to before. It was David's birthday so once we had camp set up, we did cake and ice cream. I tried to get him with trick candles, but we didn't get the best of him.
Then on Thursday morning we realized there were a few important things that we forgot ;-P so we headed back into town - luckily we were only about 20 minutes away so it didn't take too much time. When we got back to camp it was nice and warm so we played in the water. The water was just a bit too cold for Trysten, but he enjoyed sitting in his Turtle float on the Island - or "My Iwund" as Brailee calls it. While the older girls have fun on the water tramp, Brailee has enjoyed the "Iwund" for the last two summers - it has seats on both sides but is mesh in the middle, so when it's on the water it fills up and creates the perfect pool/play area for Brailee.
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I was glad we got some water play time in that day because it was either too cold or too rainy the rest of the weekend. The girls tried one more time but it was too cold and they didn't last long. David even put away the water tramp and island early on Saturday because it was just too cold. We still had fun, though - it was nice to just sit and do nothing sometimes! David's parent's showed up to join us Thursday afternoon and camp with us the rest of the weekend and Kevin, Sandy, and Kolbie came out a few times during the weekend - unfortunately they seemed to bring the wind with them ;-P so they never got to play in the water with us.
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On Saturday the 4th, we were sitting down to dinner and saw a storm approaching. We had a few rain storms before that day so we figured we could ride it out in the shelter - the boys got some tarps set up around the shelter to try to block the wind and rain. After a while the wind was getting worse and it just wasn't looking good so we made a dash to the campers. We made it just in time as we got hit with one of the worst hail storms I have ever been in! The lake was really choppy and the wind was blowing so hard, just rocking our poor little camper! The hail was only about marble-sized but it left little dings all along the side. As it started coming down it was so loud we couldn't even hear each other talking, and it was smacking the camper so hard I'm surprised nothing broke! It was a white-out outside during the hailstorm, you couldn't see more than 5 feet from the camper! I don't mind sleeping and camping in a tent, but after a storm like that, I was so thankful we had something more solid! Anyway, once it was over, we had a nice little rainbow and in some spots it looked like snow on the ground. From our campsite we could see the highway across the lake and shortly after the storm, we saw a snow plow drive by! Even on the ride home the next day we could still see piles of hail on the side of the road. It was definitely one of the coolest 4th of July weekends I ever remember!
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Luckily that was the last of the storms for the weekend - it was a cold night but we still got to do our fireworks. That was the reason we picked that lake, because they allow fireworks - even though last year we were at a lake where fireworks are banned but it didn't stop our neighbors from doing them in the middle of the night. This year Brailee didn't mind the sparklers and quiet ones but she sure didn't like the bigger, louder fireworks. She ended up falling asleep on Grandma's lap. Trysten was the one I expected to not like the noise but he never got upset. He fell asleep as well, despite the noise.
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You'll see in some of the pictures below, Brailee has a new favorite fashion item - her swimsuit cover-up, which she calls her "Robe Jacket" - she is too silly! She would wake up in the morning and ask for it - even when it was mostly warm, she just had to have it on!
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The water was so high at the lake that it even covered some of the trees along the edge, so there was no beach to play on near the water. But luckily we had a lot of sand right around the shelter, so the girls got to build sand castles, we just had to bring buckets of water to make the sand just right. And since there are no seashells here in Wyoming, we had to find bottle camps that had been left around our campsite to decorate the castles.
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Speaking of bottle caps, I was just so disgusted with the garbage that some people leave around! When we got there Wednesday night, the girls and I walked around with plastic bags and cleaned up the camp site - beer bottles, diapers, wrappers, pop cans, you name it! Then when we left on Sunday we cleaned up the spot next to us as the partiers from the day before just left it trashed! I wish people would be more considerate, they ruin it for everyone else! Okay, I'm done venting!
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So now here are a few of my favorite pictures - followed by a slideshow with more pictures of course!
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Happy Campers!
Wild and Crazy Brianna
Yummy Treats!
Proud Big Sister, Kaylee
Brianna and Sadie
Trysten rolled over by himself during the storm - luckily I had my camera close-by and got it in pictures!
Well, I've taken a long enough break - now back to cleaning ;-P
