Sorry I am still playing blog catch-up!
For Labor Day weekend we did one more big camping trip to send summer out with a BANG! Preston's family reserved a large group site at Rockport Lake and so there was the promise of lots of cousins to play with as well as more wave runner rides to go along with the usual smores and sleeping bags. The kids were superexcited!
We got up there on Friday night. We had dinner, ate smores, all the usual stuff! We soon settled in for the night. The kids weren't too bad, and went to sleep without too much of a fight. The weather wasn't nearly as cooperative. It started getting really windy at some point during the pitch black night, and our tent was moving and flapping around so much I couldn't get back to sleep. Eventually the lightning and thunder started, followed by some serious rain. All of which seems extra-super-especially loud and bright in a tent. I felt like I didn't sleep all night. Luckily, the kids weren't phased much, although Arden kept rolling into the side of the tent and getting a little wet.
The next day started out cold, but sunny. The little boy cousins spent a solid 45 minutes throwing rocks into the water, one after the other after the other. It was fascinating. Here is Dax, on rock number 1,297.
After it warmed up a bit, we busted out the wave runners and quite a few people took a ride. Here is Preston with our nephew K:
During our little rest, the winds reached hurricane force and our tent was almost folded in half. Cora was screaming! Preston came down to check on us and the rain started flying again. Preston decided that in order to save our tent from ripping it needed to be taken down. So, Preston and a helper took our tent down WITH all our stuff inside, folded it thirds, and threw it in the back of our car. Me and the kids sat in the car and watched the storm and wondered what to do. The worst of the storm passed and the rain stopped. It was nearly dinnertime, so we decided we would stick around and eat and then decide whether or not to go home, since we had been planning to stay another night and a day.
The kids found interesting stuff to do while the beach was not an option. Arden and Cora enjoyed getting their hair done by their cousins:
After dinner, it was nice and sunny and the wind had died down, so we decided to unfold our tent and give it another try. The tent was back up, and the kids played for a while. Then it was time for another round of smores. As I was on my third or fourth smore, I looked out over the water and saw some lightning flashes.
Oh joy. Here we go again.
We quickly finished up our smores and watched the storm coming towards us. I folded up our camp chairs so they wouldn't blow away and made sure all our food was put away in the coolers or bins. I quickly made the kids use the bathroom and brush their teeth (side note: NOT flushy bathrooms. SO not acceptable. There were some flushies at the boat ramp about half a mile down the road. I made the trek more than once). We got into the tent just as big raindrops started splattering and the wind started roaring again. We were putting the kids in their jammies and trying to decide whether to stay or make a run for it. Thunder was crashing, the wind was howling, our tent was flapping, and Daxton was...sleeping?
That kid went to sleep on top of Arden's sleeping bag before we even had the girls in their jammies. I picked him up and stuffed him in his own sleeping bag and that decided it for us. We hunkered down for another long night. Luckily, after an hour or so of pretty impressive storminess, things calmed down and the rest of the night was blissfully quiet (except for Preston's snoring, which was complained about by people in other tents).
The next morning was sunny! Hooray. Still a little cold though. The cousins huddled in the van again, getting "makeovers." Another not-so-campy activity, but with fun results:
We don't get the wave runners out on Sunday, but we decided to let the kids enjoy "the beauty of nature" down by the water. The water level was pretty low this year, and in some places instead of sand there was, well...mud:
It was a really beautiful day. There were lots of sailboats out on the water, but I didn't really get any pictures. I was pretty much a picture slacker the rest of the time. The kids went swimming in their life jackets, made sandcastles AND mud pies, and pretty much just got really good and dirty. Some cousins brought their dogs and our kids LOVE dogs and spent a lot of time giving them walks and chasing them around. Dax spent a lot of his time throughout the trip roaming around the big pavilion, looking for anything of anyone else's that looked good. I caught him stealing a Hostess cupcake from my niece, some licorice from a SIL, and an entire gigantic box of goldfish from another SIL, which Dax and his little cousin B ran up the pathway with and "sneakily" ate in full sight of everyone. I have no idea what he got away with while I wasn't looking. There were also some craw fish caught and possibly taken home as pets (not by us, of course).
I gotta say, the lake looks beautiful under a nice blue, sunny sky:
It was only 45 minutes from Rockport to home, but Dax was asleep in the first five. We left the wave runners up there since some people we staying another night. We headed up again the next day and did some more wave running (and it was warm enough for me to join in this time). No pictures again.
We headed back early since school was starting the next day. We had a back-to-school feast of steak (and in my case, salmon) on the deck:
1 comment:
It was a fun trip! I'm going to have to steal some of your pictures, I was a super slacker and didn't take a single one. :)
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