A 4th of Fun

Why I thought taking my 3 boys camping would be a good idea... I'm CRAZY......

and my motto is "I Can Do Hard Things."

Sorry Chris, you missed this Bear Valley View.....

and this dirt smuged face ....
and this slobbery chin because he got his first tooth...

and Zach using the force, with his new Starwars fishing pole, to reel in a big one.

Taking turns with the poles was a challenge for these 8 little friends but an even bigger challenge was for the parents not to get snagged as they perfected their casts.

Jackson never seemed to get near the water without getting totally soaked. His mother knowing his tendencies brought an ample supply of clothing for him.

What's the 4th without a BBQ and homemade ice cream? This time we had Vanilla....Hutching style. Rod gave each parent an ingredient for the ice cream and sent the kids down the assembly line with a baggy. At the end they place their zip lock bag inside and larger one with salt and ice....

and then everyone got their groove on shaking their bags for about 10 minutes.

After a little help from mom this soft serve went perfectly with the dutch oven brownies.

A little bedtime snack of roasted marshmallows before everything gets put into the bear proof.....cars. Apparently in the early hours of the morning of our arrival a black bear was snooping around camp eating leftover tidbits. He left one muddy paw print on the hibachi grill as his calling card. We did not want any more unauthorized visitors in our camp.

We tunneled on over to Windier I mean Whittier for some 4th of July festivities.

This small town put on a traditional .....

and not so traditional parade.

But who really cares as long as they throw candy....right;)

Tethering Ethan to this metal buoy seemed like a good way to keep him from he blowing away.

The funnest part for the boys was the whip cream throw.

It was so windy that we tried putting rocks on our plates to keep the food from blowing away at the BBQ. As it blew our full cans of soda over we gave up and retreated back to our non windy camp site.

In the end the boys were having so much fun our overnighter turned into 2. My boys just couldn't get enough playtime with the Kent kids. This camping trip was unique in so many ways. I missed having Chris' extra pair of hands but mostly I just missed not being able to make these memories with him. Thank you, dear friends, for helping me with the boys and allowing us to share this holiday with you.

And Jackson I know you were only trying to SAVE Zach from the crocodiles in the river not throw him to the crocs.