So Long Gang Campout, 2013!

Well, all good things must come to an end. We had "planted" all the tomato plants in the sand we could stand....

...These hot guys got the boat out of the camp marina...

...Folks started packing up and heading for home...

Luckily we had our group shots under our belt.Thanks to the little ones for being my test shots. Even Addison wandered in to be a subject!

This is the kids-requested, "everyone make a funny face" shot.

Yay! All of us! Back row: Cole, Cyndi, Jon, Kim, Ken, Kristin, Chris, Lena, Tiffany, Mike. Front row: Cade, Mitch, Nathan, Addison, Tim, Taline, TJ, Stacey and me! Wooooo!

Before we left we sat around and gabbed for a while, and the boys had Cokes. Vanilla for CR, cherry for Tim, and regular for my husband.

We discussed Lena's abundance of camping hair...

And in the 22-acre wood, Christopher Robin said his good-byes to Pooh.

So we packed it in and hit the road, Boise-bound. Thanks to everyone who packed and planned and shopped and drove and cleaned up the boat and took off time and spent the weekend camping. Such fun! xoxo

An Infestation of Beavers

Dang there were a lot of Beavers in central Oregon. I usually notice an abundance of Ducks in central Oregon (versus eastern Oregon, where I notice an abundance of Beaver supporters...go ag!), but both schools have outposts in Bend.

There's a little duck love! I have a pic of these two in a similar setup from about 10 years ago! Some things never change.

See? Ducks and Beavers can live together peacefully. After spending two days on a paddleboard with me, TJ quietly approached me with, "You're a Duck? Oh. Your sweatshirt is...wrong." Hahah. There was a dearth of OIT Owls representation, the school where most of the husbands met.

Oh yeah? Well we had another allegiance...Girl Party t-shirts! Hahahah! The kids asked a lot of questions about these shirts, because they have those adorable cartoons of us on the back, and also because I was wearing the black one from Vegas...

And sister was wearing the white one from Kahneeta...though this was the only shot of her in it I seemed to capture.

They brought their Beavers chairs too, and we forgot our Duck chair! Dang it! We'll represent better next time.

Nights in Camp

After all that swimming and floating and paddleboarding and boating and general fun in the sun, we needed a fire and some dinner! Despite my best efforts to make the group camp a camp other than mine, most group events ended up in our campsite! It just seemed to work out that way.

We tried doing tatoes in the fire one night, but as you may know, they usually take longer than you want to wait. So they ended up being used for breakfast instead.

No camp is complete without kids playing in the fire.

Sometimes it seemed like the kids outnumbered us, but they didn't really. They were like a tow-headed gang. A really short gang.

When. Are. You. Dumb. Adults. Going. To. Feed. Me.

Such lovely campers!

All the kids were really engaged and helpful, even the littlest one pitching in to run down to the store and get ice!

I think these other lovely campers were chatting with my husband and CR, but I just love my Kristin's flirtatious expression.

Thankfully some smart campers brought barbecues. None of those smart campers was us. Yay everyone else!

It wasn't easy to feed 20 people from 3 barbecues on one tiny picnic table, but no one went hungry.

Camping chaos.

One morning Kim opened her barbecue to discover it had been filled with all the leftover steaks from the previous night. Mmmm. Reminded me of some girls who put pizza in their hotel room dresser. ;)

A Mid-celebration Celebration!

While we were out on the boat, my friend Kelly got married! She had a small, simple ceremony with just a few friends, but asked some of her peeps to please celebrate in their own way wherever they were at the time of their ceremony, and she would include the pix in a collection. I love this idea!

So, among a great group of old friends we've known forever, on August 23rd at 5 p.m. Mountain Time, we raised a red Solo cup in observance of our friends' hitchin'!

Cyndi graciously took a bunch of pix of us, but seriously, swimsuit, no makeup, lake water hair? Ugh. I loved this one of my husband but it was unpublishable of me. Really. Not. Good.

I like to think my husband would have worn this hat to the event had he attended. Congratulations and eternal happiness, newlyweds!

Boat Days

I just love being on a boat. Tho I wasn't on the boat much this trip, having my own vessel of course. ;)

The Lovely Ladies Arnold. Lena's first camping trip. Good job on the sun protection, mom!

And Mike's first trip with the gang! Welcome new members!

And soooo great to see old members too.

The boys did a good job of kickin' it, and then taking all the kids out on the ski boat, leaving many of us to float in peace.

They were like a gang! Thankfully they didn't outnumber us, or they might have commandeered the boat.

Family portrait: Don't eff with us.

The LadyFloat! I wish i'd taken a cuter pic of all of us, standing up...wearing clothes...smiling. Oh well, next time.

Dry towel nap on Dad. Can't go wrong there.

We were a lot of folks for just two boats, but we made it work. I didn't crop this pic in tighter because then you'd miss me in the bottom right corner. Hee hee!

Don't Forget the Floaties!

In addition to our paddleboards, we had a bounty of inflatable floaties too. I love a nice floaty. Here, our Kristin is demonstrating what is known in our circle as "a diaper." Turning your lifevest upside down and stepping into the armholes allows you to float unencumbered. This term used hilariously by one of the kids when heading off to jump off rocks into the water..."we should all wear diapers!!" Hahaha!

Addison, approaching Kim, Stacey in the background.

Addison paddles his own boat...

...Front tooths or not. We discussed that the kid got $20 from the Tooth Fairy for that one. Initially I was taken aback, (and not just because I have been the tooth fairy for Halloween) but upon hearing that it had to be removed by the dentist, I could empathize, having had to have 4 baby teeth removed by a dentist my own self. At age 7, upon hearing that I would have teeth pulled, I locked myself in the bathroom and had a complete freak-out melt-down crying fit for like an hour. I remember it VIVIDLY.

If only sister could relax.

CR saves this little flotilla of ladies from floating out to sea.

Floaties rock.

Paddling Adults

On the second day of boating, we adults got smart and became the passengers, letting the kids paddle us!

And they were surprisingly good at it!

Such nice boys paddling their mamas around.

Such nice boys paddling their mamas around.

OK, I suspect Lena didn't make much distance on this cruise, but she gets an A for effort.

This set-up turned into a bit of a stand-still. So much fun to just paddle around!