a'Camping we will Go!

When I was younger, my family would make an annual summer trip to camp at Big Lake in the White Mountains in Eastern Arizona. After Matt & I were married, we camped there twice with my family before heading off to grad school. This year we actually got to go again after a 6 year hiatus!!
We stay in an established campground with paved roads, designated sites, picnic tables, fire rings, water spigots, actual bathrooms w/ toilets and a sink and you can even pay $5 for a hot shower, if you choose! Love it! My parents have camped in the same site # for YEARS and years. We got to share a site with my sister's little family, directly next to our parents' site. My uncle David, aunt Candy and their 5 year old son Dustin also stayed two camp sites over on the other side of my parents.

This is the place!This is the site

Of course the kids enjoyed exploring the great outdoors without restraint. The first injury (and only, thank goodness) came the first full day we were there, when Gavin accidentally poked himself in the face with a sharp stick! Boy are we really grateful for eyelids!!!!! That was a close one!Friday morning, Matt went out to fish super early with my dad. After breakfast, we took the kids out but it really was soooo windy down at the lake, we all ended up freezing and didn't catch a thing. Got some cute pictures though! ;)

Brooklyn chose the total relaxation method of fishingGavin was probably the most excited to fish at the lake.
He talked about it for weeks beforehand!Even though Preston is too big for the Bjorn, Matt still insists on containing him that way!
As long as it's not me that has to lug around that 25 lbs on my front!A lump of Blake, trying to stay warm

This is a Big Lake phenomena -- the pregnant tree. Everyone in our family has to spot the pregnant tree while driving down to our fishing spot. I wonder how it must feel to be pregnant all those years???? We've joked before that one year her "bump" will be gone with tons of new little trees at her base one year. ;)

We did plenty of lounging,

scootering,Ranger-rides w/ uncle Taylor,trying to start the forest on fire with a bow & drill,and played a friendly game (ha!) of ladderball with my Aunt and Uncle.
It was girls vs boys. Boys prevailed this time. We will have a rematch!

My brothers brought back a boatload of ginormous crawdads from the lake (they catch them with cut off fishheads with guts dangling *shudder*) and COOKED these babies up to EAT!!! I refused to taste them.

We had tacos for dinner with the entire family then did S'mores for dessert!

Saturday was another day mostly filled with fishing. Matt was back and forth to and from the lake several time that day; first by himself, then w/ Blake, then with the rest of the family. This was the money day, with Matt maxing out his limit within a few hours!!! When he took Blake down to fish, I heard his sweet little voice over the walkie-talkie 5 times, "Mom, I caught a fish! Mom, I caught another fish! Mom, I caught 5 fish!" I was so excited for him, but obviously I wasn't there to catch any of those moments on camera. My dad did, but we'll see if I ever actually SEE those pictures! ;) When the rest of us went down, our group was the talk of the shoreline due to the amazing success Matt was having. I caught two fish that day, one of which I cast out on my OWN and within literally two minutes, I had a bite! I (and Gavin) reeled that sucker in and it was a good size rainbow trout!

Our total family catches of the day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Oh yes, I sure DID!!! I am woman, hear me ROAR!!! lol
I'm not afraid to gut and clean my own fish!The master's hands (my Dad's) at work, cleaning fish

We did foil dinners with steamed veggies that night then headed over to my parents' campsite for dutch oven cobbler 'round the campfire.

Sunday morning, I got up at the bum-crack of dawn to go fishing with just my dad and mom.

The lake was so peaceful and although we watched the dude next to us reel in a fish every other minute, we had a great time and were marginally successful in our efforts. I caught two fish, one of which I pulled all the way to the shore then the hook came loose and the fish took off. pffft!

My dad had the story of ALL stories, though!!! We were in a popular fishing spot that happens to have a rock ledge that if you're not careful, you can get snagged on when reeling in. Apparently a lot of fishermen/women had caught their line on the ledge which resulted in snapped line and lost hooks, swivels, weights. We were all keeping an eye on the six poles we had out and I thought I saw the one in front of my mom bounce a bit. She started reeling in, then MY pole started dancing so I started reeling in. We then figured our lines had crossed, but when I got mine in, it was tangled with a stray line, that was MAJORLY tangled with my mom's line. So my dad worked to get my mom's line free of this mess of someone else's line. When he got my mom's free, he pulled and pulled on this tangled line to get it out of the water. My mom joked, "Wouldn't that be funny if there was a fish on there?" The fishermen on the other side of my dad took notice of what he was doing and my dad commented, "Real men don't use fishing poles to fish." LOL! All of a sudden, as my dad FINALLY get to the end of the line, lo and behold there IS a fish on the end of the line!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My dad pulled it up on shore, stood up and beat his chest like a gorilla and we all had a good laugh!!! What are the chances??? He figured that someone else the day before had the fish on, their line snagged and snapped but the fish was still hooked and the line was tangled so it was trapped. My dad let the poor fishy go and he swam happily away, probably relieved to be free, but got to have had a major sore throat. haha!

Camping takes a LOT of prep work, but it's sooooo worth in once you get set up and can just relax and enjoy the beautiful nature around you!! We're hoping to keep this up as an annual adventure with my family. Can't wait until next year!

The Purest Form

I wanted to write this down before it's completely gone from my memory.

Last Fast Sunday (June 6th), when members of the congregation were invited to bear their testimonies, I leaned over to Blake and asked if he wanted to bear his testimony.

Now, to backtrack a bit -- we've always encouraged our kids that when they are ready, they are more than welcome to go up and share their testimony ON THEIR VERY OWN, without mommy or daddy or sibling whispering what to say in their ear.

So back to the story- Blake nodded his head yes and I asked him what he was going to say, he told me, then he got up and walked confidently up to the stand to wait his turn. When that time came, he stood up to the microphone and instantly, that confidence I saw just minutes before melted away and he was stuck before he even began. I caught his eye, mouthed "You can do it!" and nodded my head to him. My eyes were welling up with tears already!!! He fidgeted around for a bit then Matt got up, knelt by him on the stand, gave him a little pep-talk and maybe a *little* prompting and Blake bore his testimony for the very first time. My heart swelled and a few tears escaped.

It was truly a kodak moment and at that very second, I was wishing I could stand up and take a picture, to capture the precious scene I was witnessing, a father there by his little boy's side. I hope I never forget that moment, ever.

More Garden Goodness!

It's been awhile since I've blogged about our garden! We are about up to our eyeballs in our fresh produce from it!! Here's some garden progression pics-

April 30th May 6thJune 4th (you can see the grass wasn't doing so hot,
then we decided to water it ;) and all is good now!) -Here are some pictures of our overabundance that we've been farming off to neighbors!
And this isn't even all of it!!!!

Soooo sad that our watermelon vines died :( Boohoo! I don't know what we did wrong this time?? Maybe it was the sudden on set of sweltering temps! We had a couple small ones growing already, darn.

You can see red everywhere when you look at the garden!!

We've been picking 100+ cherry tomatoes at a time, the record being 243!!!! (shown here)Cucumbers out the wazoo ~ picked 16 this day!!!!!Zuchhini that hides then ends up being the size of my forearm!!

I've already shredded up a bunch and frozen it so I can make bread or toss it into sauces later. :)

Cantaloupes galore!!! I think we have 15 decent size melons that will be ready to go here soon!We yanked the celery plant out because it had started to flower. We never really got any substantial stalks like you'd see at the grocery store. Just skinny ones. Don't know if we'll try this again next year.We have a love/hate relationship with our corn. It was by far the most fun to watch grow so quickly, but then we haven't been able to pick a decent ear. They are all very small and since we were waiting for them to grow bigger, they started shriveling up a bit. We obviously need to do our research on corn because we'll for sure be doing it again next year!! There are still lots on the stalks.But we did find this friendly little guy in an ear of corn......
And on the non-produce side of things, months and months back, right before we planted our garden this season, Gavin had a substitute teacher in his Sunbeam class that gave him a packet of sunflower seeds. We decided to plant them in our garden for some prettiness and it's been great to watch them grow so tall and bloom! Gavin is proud of "his" sunflowers! :)We love our evening ritual of checking the garden for goodies when Matt gets home from work. We've really enjoyed gardening and are already trying to figure out how we'll expand for next year, even though we're still in full picking mode right now! I even told Matt once that it would be fun to have chickens.... Am I outta my mind??!

First Swim of the Season

We're so glad that Matt's brother has a pool at his house and lives just up the street and around the corner from us! Yesterday we took full advantage and spent a couple hours swimming.

{This picture was a quick-grab-my-camera-and-shoot, so it's focusing past the kids onto the fence, but I love it anyway!}

Preston was a wildman and thought he could just go go go all on his own. haha!Thankfully Brooklyn and Blake have retained their skills and didn't need any help. :)Gavin is always a little more cautious.And I love the end result after a morning of exhausting play... :)

Cabin Getaway

Matt was going to be heading to the Teacher/Priest high adventure trip for the second half of the week so the kids and I escaped to the cabin along with cousins to help kill some time! (he gets back tomorrow)

The kids {esp Gavin} love pointing out the "Phoenix arrow" as we're driving up Ironwood and west on the 60, so of course they got giddy when it was right out their window as we drove by it on our way up North!

Dirty faces & dirty fingernails ~ a sure sign of a good time!

The three little boys of the family - Jacob (23 months), Adam (29 months), Preston (17 months) - all born in the same year; only 6 months separate each of them. :)
This picture wasn't easy to capture! It took some serious wrangling to get all three of them in the same frame!

Bubble blowing & otter popsWho needs snow for sledding??? Hence the dirt-laden children.

Bathing in the laundry room wash basin -- it's a cabin tradition that I'm pretty sure every baby has participated in!

Cookie bakingPuzzle doingBedtime story reading

Every time we get together, I announce how glad I am that Emily and Brooklyn have each other. They are currently the only girl cousins out of 10 grandchildren on the Palmer side (we get a new baby girl next month!!!) and they are just 7 weeks apart, thank goodness! ♥

I always love spending time up at the LeBaron cabin with my sisters-in-law and mother-in-law. I love me some good girl chatter and we always get to know more about each other, be it good or bad! LOL! ;) Jen and I learned that we follow the same bedtime prep routine for ourselves- wash face, brush teeth, blow nose, chapstick, lotion- exactly in that same order! And we also learned that I *might* get a little slap-happy-slash-wild when playing Hand & Foot (card game) at 10:30pm.

The kids had a few squabbles here and there but no one can deny that we all had a pretty good time! Now about all that filthy laundry.... sigh.