Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Memorial Day Weekend

We spent Memorial Day weekend camping. It was a lot of fun, but I tell you, I am tired of the rain. All week, I checked the weather which promised to be nice all weekend. On Thursday, when I checked the weather, they had changed the forecast to rain on Friday and Monday. Friday morning when I checked the weather they had changed it to rain every day. We braved the weather anyway, because rain when you are in a trailer isn't too bad. After all, the pitter-patter of the rain on the roof is a wonderful sound. It takes me back to when I was young, and we were camping along the Fremont River in Utah in our tent trailer.

We did a ton of hiking on this trip. We camped in a regional park with all sorts of trails. We hiked everyday, and the kids were troopers. They didn't complain (much) and we got to enjoy nature. We saw deer, geese, chipmunks, birds, and wildflowers. Here is a picture of the kids on one of the trails - the trail goes under this enormous tree that had fallen over:

One thing I am not sure that I will ever get used to is the moss in the Northwest. I know that people think that it is beautiful, but I think it is creepy. And gross. It does make for some neat pictures though. On one hike, we didn't go the way that my oldest wanted so I appeased him by letting him take pictures. This is one that he took:

This is another shot that my oldest took of my youngest. I think that he is doing his best pirate-imitation:

I was amazed at the size of some of the trees that we came across. And this particular tree had strange holes in it - probably from woodpeckers or something. Here is my daughter posing by the tree against her will:

My oldest was hoping for some time alone with his dad, and in this shot he is trying to convince me to take my daughter and youngest son on a different, longer trail. It didn't work. We stayed together. He wore his sweatshirt around his waist and on his head:

While we were camping we enjoyed food (roasted marshmallows, tin-foil dinners, pancakes for breakfast, trail mix); stories (Magic Treehouse, family stories); games (5,000, Sorry Express, Yahtzee, Dora Candyland, baseball and Frisbee in the park); good books (I read Slumming by Kristen Randle, and Bryan is reading Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t by Jim Collins); and family fun.

Monday morning we woke up and decided we were sick of the rain so we packed up and were home by 9:30. I am almost done with all the laundry, and the trailer has been cleaned out and dried (thanks, B!), and we are back in the swing of things today.

What did you do for Memorial Day weekend? Any grand plans for the week?

6 comments:

Cheryl said...

I'm glad you guys had such a good time, despite the nasty weather. I looked at the radar map of the country, and pretty much everyone north of Mexico and east of the Pacific had rain or snow. Figures!

You already know how we spent our weekend... :)

Kelly said...

Beautiful pictures! Sounds like such a good time. Lucky!

I love littlest's face in that first picture. He's truly in the camping zone.

Anonymous said...

Please don't hate me if I say the moss facinates me! I think it's so kewl. I'm glad you all had a great time.

Ginna said...

man, sorry I'm so behind with the comments. It wasn't fun to be without internet for so long!
Camping sounds like so much fun. Youguys are brave to have gone and done it in spite of the weather. Hopefully we're going to get some good camping in this summer. I wish we had a trailer!
That's fun that you read slumming, I liked that book a lot! :)

Darilyn said...

Sounds like you had a great time despite the rain. I was wondering how all of you campers were doing out there. Did you get to see the cool lightning show?

Amber said...

Great pictures and it looks like fun! We had lots and lots of rain on Memorial Day. This is the first year we realized it rains every year so we stayed home. :-)