Campin' Out

I have been asking Mark if we could schedule a camping trip sometime before the spring. We never really could settle on a day and he wasn't really looking forward to sleeping in a tent with a newborn (at least until we knew how well he could sleep). After oogling over camping gear at a store one night, we finally agreed to plan a trip and settled on the weekend before Thanksgiving.


And we had a blast! It was nice and cold at night (which meant lots of snuggling) but just beautiful during the day (no coats needed). We traveled to Hunting Island, SC, which turned out to be not too far from home and the towns we passed on the way were very nice. Hunting Island is a state park so there was a lot of naturalness to it. The campsite was full and we met a lot of nice people too (most of them couldn't believe we were tent camping with ten kids!).

Ceili Rain and Josiah were in heaven with all that dirt and sand!  And Ceili Rain has clothes that will be thrown away to prove it (thankfully they were one dollar or less clothes).

We utilized our dutch oven this trip.  It was given to us by some camping friends and I love the oven.  Unfortunately, we forgot coal briquettes and had to purchase them at the camp store.  Anyway, the above picture is of a most extremely yummy apple cobbler deluxe.  It was awesome!

Bryant's first trip to the ocean, out of utero!

Okay, so the weather was nice but the water was freezing!  That didn't stop our water lovin' children.  They kept wading in more and more until they just came out plumb soaking wet!  And grinning from ear to ear.

Ceili Rain was still a little timid around the waves but loved playing in the foam they created.

This is the lighthouse on the island.  It is no longer functional but very pretty!

Sister love! (It's so much fun catching these sweet moments)

This is pre-dirty Ceili Rain.  If you look closely you can see the smudges beginning to appear.

In the process of taking a dirt bath.

And finished with the dirt bath!

I was bound and determined that they were not going to take a shower while we were there (that's just a lot of work with all the kids) but by Saturday night, we couldn't stand it any longer and threw Ceili Rain in to be washed.  The next morning, she got up and within five minutes we could no longer tell she had a bath the night before.

Zoe has been learning to cook and her first task was learning to scramble eggs.  She does a great job (even if she's on pins and needles as she works because she doesn't want to mess it up)!  She loved helping out during breakfast time. (Check out Mark's "Love Me Tender" pj pants...oh yeah!)

And the coolest thing that we barely caught on film occurred Saturday night.  We were eating supper and I heard a noise in the leaves beside us.  I turned and saw three deer.  One doe and her two fawns.  They were just standing there and then slowly walked through the camp.  All of us were in awe!  I don't think I've ever been that close to deer before.