Birthday Giggles

TJei was tickled pink to celebrate her birthday surrounded by cousins singing Happy Birthday to her! She was even in good humor when Mitri tricked her into "smelling" her cake so he could nudge her nose into the icing. It was so, so much fun to see her spending time with all these little ones and the fun continued after the special surprise birthday gift Aunt Ogie arranged to have delivered from town was delivered!

TJei loves her new bike and she has already gotten quite good at riding and steering. She did a lot of riding on the basketball court when it wasn't being used and she also took rides around the campground with cousins on their bikes.

TJei says, "That was my best birthday ever."

Breaking Camp

It took a bit of time to get things broken down and packed up. We had been there just a few days (arrived Thursday and left Sunday) but Zena and Heather and everyone had been at the campground all week.

No Phones

Quentin called earlier to let me know that he and a couple friends will be going camping tomorrow night and they all agreed - no cell phones. They'll be turning off phones for the overnighter. I think that is great and I hope they're able to actually do it! :-)

They'll be going out to the same area where our family camped recently.

I really appreciate Quentin letting me know ahead of time about the plans to turn off phones. Dang, I still can't believe they've agreed to turn them off! Too cool.

Camp Cooking

During our weekend camp outing, Mike demonstrated some of his dutch oven cooking skills by "baking" biscuits in cast iron pans to go along with the sausage gravy he'd made on the camp stove. Mike enjoys the outdoors and he enjoys camp style cooking. He made breakfast both mornings - one morning biscuits and gravy with fruit and juice and the second morning we had pancakes with bacon and sausage, fruit and juice.

The guys who had arrived on Thursday evening (Jacob, Quentin and Mike) had deli style sandwiches for dinner. Jacob made dinner, burgers and chips, on Friday evening and Kelly made dinner, taco soup, on Saturday evening.

For lunches, we had deli style sandwiches; a variety of sliced meats - ham, turkey, beef, salami and pepperoni and a variety of cheeses - colby, swiss, monterey jack with jalapeno and an assortment of veggies - romaine lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions, etc and wheat rolls.

There was plenty of food, plenty of snacks and hearty appetites. We did overlook marshmallows though - there were no marshmallows for roasting over the campfire in the evenings.