Father Son Campout

Aaron took Elliot on their first Father Son Camp Out! They did it on the ranch. Elliot was SO EXCITED. He had all the flashlights in the house gathered up a day in advance. He kept talking about how it was going to be "just us boys," but while I was helping him pack up, he tried to slip in a few baby toys for Annabelle. I reminded him that she was going to stay home with me, and he started crying! It was super cute. He quickly recovered and went back to boys club mode. 

He's in that line of boys shooting off rockets

 Aaron says that Elliot asked to go to sleep around his normal bedtime, and he was literally the last person to wake up. Pretty much everyone was up at 6, but Elliot made it to almost 8. He slept through the pancakes and eggs, but his loving Daddy snagged him a donut and some Doritos for when he woke up.

lil sleepy head

breakfast of champions

 A few days later, they continued their father son bonding by going to Lego club at the library. They set out several buckets of legos for an hour, and then let kids put their creations on display by the front door. Pretty cool!

Patagonia

We went camping at Patagonia Laake with the Coes, McMurdies, Heyens, and Grahams (who got there late and had a campsite a little ways off from ours). We followed the directions from the built in navigation in our van to get there. It took us a weird way that involved a lot of dirt roads and a gate that we had to get out of the car to open and close behind us. It was questionable, but we made it there! The van got super dusty and it revealed a ton of Elliot hand prints all over the doors 😅

There was a cow wandering around the campsite that came up and rubbed its head against our van. I guess she saw her reflection and wanted to say hello? We weren't actually there to see it, but a friendly Canadian guy with a ponytail got a video of it on his phone and showed it to us.

Friends! Water! Sand! Toys!

The Coes brought an inflatable boat that was a big hit

Sadly, fire restrictions started that same week so we couldn't cook anything there. We brought pizza and had cold pb chocolate oatmeal the next day.

I love that Elliot is old enough to really play pretend now. There were many cries of "Fire powers! Rock Powers! Water Powers!" as the boys cavorted around the campsite

Baby in a box? Genius containment option!

My favorite part of camping is staying up late chatting. The stars were bright, and some of us went down to the beach area for a clear view. Elliot kept trying to escape the tent after we put him down to sleep. Annie went down fine, but kept waking up in the night because her nose was all stuffy. 

Elliot and Annie trying to convince me that it was time to wake up

We hit the beach again once it warmed up the next morning. Aaron and I took a turn on the boat and I did an oh-so-graceful roll off to swim around for a bit, then pulled kids around for a while. We ate some lunch, changed clothes, and then drove home the non-private property route.