More Camping at Echo!

OK, you will probably get tired of me posting about all our camping trips. So I might condense it some. We went a LOT this summer. I counted how many days we stayed in our trailer this summer and it was 38 days. That's a lot!! But we made a lot of fun memories too!

I decided to go down for a few days just with the kids. Richard was going to come down for the weekend. So away we went. We basically just played on the dock and in the lake and the kids had fun running around on the grass too. It was nice this year that the water was low enough that there was a little bit of a rocky beach. That made DJ so much happier. Made a huge difference. He got a lot more comfortable in the water too. He would go in without me, which was wonderful!

We would usually go down around 10am and swim for a bit. Then come back up for lunch and then go down again for a few hours. Sometimes there was nobody else around and it was just us. Other times the dock was busy with the Robinson's. They took us out a few times on the boat. The kids had fun going for tube rides with the other kids. I lost all of those pictures. But they had a blast.

Richard surprised us and came on Thursday. It was a super nice surprise. The kids were all excited to see their dad. That's the hard thing about camping all summer, we all miss Richard so much when he's not with us.

DJ so happy that his dad got here!! This is our cool bungee chairs!!

We had fun relaxing around the trailer. The kids had fun helping Richard wash and buff out his motorbike. They got it looking really shiny! I watched them, while I was reading. I got a lot of books read this summer! Love it! DJ decided that he was going to be a duck one afternoon. He was walking around flapping his arms and walking around some flippers on. He kept quacking like a duck. It was pretty entertaining. He got us all laughing!

DJ made my chair into a bed and got really relaxed!

Here's our cute little duck!!

Richard and all the kids cleaning his bike!

Oh on the same topic as DJ, here's another funny story. I got him a batman book that I was reading to him every night. He loved it. Well he came out of the trailer one day and declared to everyone that he was BATMAN!! He had gotten dressed and then put on a pair of underwear over his shorts. He said that's just like batman. He insisted on wearing them all day. It was so funny! What a funny and very cute boy!

Here's are super cute batman!!

What a funny boy! He cracks me up! He even had his underwear on backwards! Ha ha ha!

We had some really long days at the trailer and sometimes it made for some very tired and grumpy kids at about 5pm. That's when I usually, started making supper. One day I had to laugh because DJ and Cadence were both curled up on the couch just a crying. Neither of them knew what they were crying about. It made me laugh. I had to get a picture of my very sad red heads!! OK so I just realized that the picture must be in my camera. Oops! One of these long days, DJ fell asleep and I couldn't wake him up. I tried and tried. So he slept for a bit and then was up till almost midnight. He was being crazy, and kept poking his head through the curtain to see what we were doing.

He was not tired at all!

My wild boy!

This is DJ trying to be sneaky!!

As I mentioned before we spent a LOT of time down at the dock. DJ loved playing on the beach. My girls have gotten so good at swimming. They always insisted on swimming without their life jackets. So I told them they could as long as I was there with them. They got very good at jumping in and swimming under the water. They became little fish. Even Brianna was jumping in and getting her head wet. This is the first year that she would do that. She even jumped off the diving board. Yeah for Brianna!! She was very brave!!

Abbi and Cadence getting ready to jump in!

Brianna loved swimming under the water too!

Abbi and Brianna. Abbi was my little diver, she would dive down and pick up rocks from the bottom.

DJ and I relaxing on the dock! Proof that I was actually there!!

One day DJ was playing on his boogie board and walking into the water from the beach. I was sitting in my chair on the dock. That way I could see everyone. DJ had his life jacket on and was swimming back and forth. He would go out to the rope that was tied from the dock to the shore. He would play on that. Well, he went and took his life jacket off without me realizing it. I was talking to someone on the dock while I was watching all my kids. I suddenly noticed that DJ had a look of panic on his face. I said, "Does he have his....." then I jumped into the water and grabbed him. He didn't say and word. But he was kicking his feet so hard that he was able to keep his face barely out of water. It scared him so bad. After that he never took off his life jacket again.

There's a picture out by the rope, but he has his life jacket on!

On the August Long weekend we had some rainy weather. So we decided to go into Kalispel on Friday, since it was pouring. Well, I think EVERYONE had the same idea as us. The traffic was insane. We thought there was an accident, but no, everyone had just come into town. But we got some shopping done. Then we decided to take the kids to a movie. So we took them to Turbo. It was about a racing snail. DJ loved the movie. Everywhere we went he would say, "White shadow", while he moves to the side. I guess you have to see the movie to understand that. But he was doing it everywhere. It was funny. After the movie we stopped at a pizza restaurant on our way home. Richard ordered root beer and it came in a bottle. It actually looked like a beer bottle. DJ thought it was great. He kept calling it his piston cup. We couldn't understand him at first. Then he said it loud and slow, "MY PISTON TUP (he can't pronounce his c's) MOM!" Oh!! Crazy boy wouldn't let go of the bottle. Sheesh! On the way out of the restaurant the kids wanted a picture of the moose!

DJ proudly holding his "piston cup"!!

My kids under the crazy nuts and bolt moose!

On Saturday the kids were all trying out the new water slide that the Robinson's made. It was pretty big. But the kids had a blast going on it. Richard and I even tried it. DJ just liked to watch us. I got pulled up on my slalom ski. I popped right up, just with the one ski. I skied all the way around the island and back. My legs were like jello. Then that same night they took us for a tube ride. The kids went first, then 2 adults were going on. They needed someone else and talked me into it. I don't know what I was thinking. It was CRAZY!! I was hanging on so tight that when I did fall off, someone took a picture of me where I was facing behind the tube, but my arm was still hanging onto the handle. So, by the next day I couldn't even move my arm. I could hardly lift it up or down, it was painful. I just pulled some muscles really good!! It was a fun ride though and yes I finally fell off.

Cadence getting out and DJ swimming in the water!! My kids are fish!

Super cute picture of Brianna!

DJ was comfortable enough to swim around everywhere with his life jacket on!

DJ trying to spray Cadence with this air gun thing!

Now he's coming to get us!! Crazy kid!

Richard and DJ! DJ got this air pump and he loved to use it as a water gun. He could shoot it far!

Cadence swam over to the neighbours dock to get my air bed. It was floating away!

 

There's the huge homemade water slide. It was a big hit! Funny to watch the kids go down. Cadence has the best facial expressions ever!

 

I think I'm getting all the days mixed up! But anyways on Sunday we met up with my family at Famous Dave's. My mom, dad, Megan, Cody and his family and Stacey and her family were all there. It was a big group and we had a lot of fun! After we ate I invited Steve and Stacey and Mom and Megan out to our trailer for the evening. Dad was headed back home for work and Cody and Em were headed home too. So the others came to the trailer. We had a lot of fun visiting and laughing. Megan and Stacey's kids all went for a swim. It was a fun evening.

I woke up Monday morning with my eyes really hurting me. I was actually feeling pretty miserable. DJ was too. We ran into Kalispel to see if we could get some good eye drops. But no, we couldn't. We came back and I kept telling Richard that we should go home. He wanted to wait till Tuesday. He was afraid the line up at the border would be huge. Well after supper I packed things up and said we were going home. I was absolutely miserable. So away we went. We left at 7:30pm. We got to the Carway border just before 10pm. We only waited for about 5mins. So that wasn't bad at all. By this time my eyes were almost glued shut. I had so much goop coming out, it was disgusting. I am glad we came home that night.

On Tuesday I got in with the doctor right away. DJ's eyes were infected too, just not as bad. As soon as I got the eye drops in my eyes they started feeling so much better. Then 2 days later I got a major sinus infection that I had to get medicine for too. So I am glad we came home for a few days. We did head back down again on Thursday. So we weren't home for too long.

Another highlight of the summer was we decided one day to drive to Missuloa for the day. We have never been and we had heard that the shopping is so good. So away we went. We stopped half way at a Café. We were the only family in there with small kids. We got a lot of looks, but our kids were really good. We had to wait awhile too. As we were getting our food a older lady came up and said we have a very nice family. She said that our kids were very well behaved and very cute. It was such a nice thing to hear.

We continued on and made it to Missuloa around 2pm. We went straight to the mall and did some shopping. It was a huge mall and had some really good stores. My goal was to finish all the kids school shopping. The kids had fun throwing in some pennies at a wishing fountain. It was super hot outside, so it was nice that we were in buildings with a/c. We went to a lot more stores. Then we stopped and had supper at Wendy's. I talked everyone into one more stop. I really wanted to go to Old Navy. So glad we did, I totally finished up all our shopping. There were some amazing deals going on. The kids had fun coloring and playing in the kids corner.

Throwing their pennies in!

Cadence doing her pose at Old Navy!!

Then we were on our way. It was just under 2hrs to get back to the trailer.  By the time we got there it was pretty late. We had grumpy kids and everyone was ready for bed. Yeah!! It was a fun day though! Glad we went.

Richard went home the next day, on Sunday. We stayed for the rest of the week. He came back again on Thursday. Lisa and Brian came on Friday night. They came to camp with us for the weekend. It was our last weekend to camp there. We were planning on pulling the trailer home on Monday. I will do another post on camping with Lisa and Brian.