Good Times with Good Friends

June 20, 2012
One of my friends was having a rough pregnancy and I wanted to give my kids some more time with their friends before we moved away.  My goal was to watch her kids for an hour or more a week.  I know it's not much time but I think the boys enjoyed it when they did get to play.  I wish I could have had them over more often.  One particular time I filled up a little pool on our tiny deck and put the boys in swim gear.  They had so much fun watching me fill the pool up, one bucket full at a time.  I filled it up in the tub then carried it to the window and dumped it into the pool.  This gave the kids a really nice temperatured pool.   

 A few things I loved about these two kids; they were similar ages with my kids, they are super polite, and always excited about life.  Seth would always ask me at church; "I come over to play trains?"  He was good at scheduling his own play dates.  Sometimes I would pick up Noah from Joy School and I would have the Tarzan cd in my car.  He loved it so much.  When Parker rode with them he had always hoped it would rain because their windshield 'blipers' were way cooler than the ones on our van.

Noah.

P-man

These boys were having a great summer day.  All they needed was some lemonade to top it off.  Thanks Noah and Seth for being our friends.

The End of Camping

We couldn't head home until we had stayed up late enough to catch some fireflies.  This was our night for it.  We had four nets, one for each of the walking children.  The sun was setting and the fireflies were on their way out.  The pictures were difficult to take at this time but it was so much fun to go hunting.  We had well over 25 fireflies in out bug box that Jared and Rach gave the boys one year.  

We had a lot of fun seeing one light up and then chasing after it to catch it.  Then we would race over to put it in the box.  The night was just right for this fun adventure with the kids.

Parker stayed up a little later than the rest of the gang.  He wanted to release every one of the fireflies.  Meaning, just opening the door for them to leave on their own wasn't good enough.  Parker had watch each one leave.  We tried to help one and I kind of injured the poor guy.  Parker was convinced the bug would fly away but I knew better.  His little light did keep shining even as he was on his death bed.

Late night means a late morning.  I didn't get a picture before Lincoln got up.

This was intended to be cousins only but it was kind of difficult to do with just them.  I still love having all the cousins together.

Before we left Lincoln really really wanted to hold Garrett.  I love how happy they both are.  This was probably my favorite picture from the whole trip.  Garrett you are so awesome.

The drive home through the Smoky Mountains.

When we stopped for lunch we found this little guy.  Two of the boys were sleeping and didn't get to see it.  It was fun to see a turtle this big.

Thanks for our last fun camping trip to the Smoky Mountains Allen family.  We had a blast and we hope that we will still find a way to have a family reunion.

Second Half of Camping

The kids were fully entertained by the hill just outside of our campground.  Luckily Jared and Rach brought a ball the kids could play with.  One of the kids would take the ball to the top of the hill and roll it down the gutter.  At the end they would all wait for the ball.  They did this for such a long time, it was also nice to have Willie playing with the kids.  I love my kids, but it's nice when they are off playing.

I love this picture because it shows how much of a kid Willie still is.  I love when he plays with the kids.  They love him so much.

I love when I get to sit down with Rach and just chat.  We don't get to see each other all that often so it's nice when it does happen.

Meal time.  When Jared and Rach made breakfast we ate their famous french toast, it's delicious.  I'm sad when I go to the store now and I can't find the Texas Toast, nice and thick slices of bread.  We knew that our kids enjoyed pancakes so that's what Willie was making on this beautiful morning.  Breakfast at the campground is so yummy.

Action shot.  Only a few times did we have the boys upset at each other.  This photo shows that a little.  They boys did have a lot of fun staying up late into the night and rising early in the morning.  I'm glad we brought warm clothes for them.

Our second hike took us to a couple of waterfalls.  This was really a great place to camp because of all the easy trails for the little kids.  If we had had one more day I would have taken the kids down the river.  

Tori and Lincoln became really good friends.  They are the closest in age and they really had fun playing together.

We made it to our destination where we heard that you could go swimming at this waterfall.  I will have to say the water was frigid.  The falls were gorgeous though.

Here are our two brave husbands getting into the water.  They both took a plunge but didn't really swim around.

We didn't convince the little boys to take a plunge but they did want to get up close and personal with the waterfall.  This is as far as they could go.  They did play near the water for a bit while the big boys were taking their dip.

Big Stick.

I only had about two months left in my pregnancy.  Seems to be that we go camping when I'm seven months along.

Oh my, look at this adorable little guy.  Love Garrett.

Poor Henry didn't like being the only one not running around with his brothers and cousin.   He did finally give us a smile, maybe that's because we gave him a rice krispy treat.

Trees.  Trees.  Beautiful Trees!  I will miss these trees.

Story time.  I'm glad we had some down time with the kids.  They needed a rest and some of my boys don't really like to take naps anymore so this was a nice relaxing time at the campsite.  Thanks Aunt Rachel for reading to the kids.

With the rain the first night most of the wood became really wet.  We had a difficult time finding dry wood.  Finally our last night we decided to buy some dry wood and here is the nice fire we had going.  It was perfect.

Lincoln doesn't really like to eat hot dogs but he did have fun roasting them over the fire.

I liked having easy meals.  Jared and Rach made burritos their dinner night and because we didn't want to do a lot of clean up on our last night we had hot dogs.