Fabulous Weekend

So this post is ENTIRELY overdue! Since the events happened more than a week ago. Due to a crazy busy week, I haven't had enough time or brain power to get it all out.
For the past couple years, our school district has put in a four-day weekend (for the students) in the early part of October. The teachers still go to work on Friday and Monday but the kids are out. This year we took advantage of it and scheduled a long family trip (including my parents) to the land. The timing was almost as perfect as the weather forecast. We would all be together for my mom's birthday.
We picked the boys up early from school on Thursday and headed out. Our trailer was being borrowed by a friend, so we were going to be tent-camping for the first time in a while. My parents' trailer is there though so we would have all the amenities we needed nearby. And since Mom and Dad weren't coming until Friday, we slept the first night in their trailer, except for Raley who insisted on sleeping in his chosen place, the TentCot. I was a little less-than-thrilled with that because I am a big fat scaredy cat, but he did great!


The TentCot

Friday morning I got our tent all set up for the rest of the weekend. We waited for Grannie and Pop to arrive, and in the meantime we got started on some of the chipper work there was to do. We planned to take the chipper back home with us so we needed to do as much as we could.


Inside the tent where Jayme, I, Pattie and Clay were going to sleep



Chipping a pile

 We had a nice campfire that night before bedtime. As Pattie and I got ready for bed in the tent she stopped in her tracks and said, "I SWEEP IN DA TRAYWER!!!!" As excited as she had been earlier in the day when she helped me set up her bed, she was insistent that she was not supposed to actually sleep in there now that it was bedtime. So she and I went back to the trailer and slept with Grannie and Pop. If I am totally honest, I would have to say that I wasn't that upset. I have never been too comfortable in a tent, I tend to hear every little noise and sound in the night and imagine it's a combination of Bigfoot and a pack of mutated coyote/mountain lions coming to eat me.



Our campfire

 During the night it got a little chilly outside! Jayme and Clay ended up sleeping together to conserve body heat and Raley said his feet got cold, but he would sleep in socks next time. We had a fabulous day celebrating Grannie's birthday in her favorite place in the world. That morning we set off a big burn pile that had been growing all summer. We had a big fish fry for dinner and sat around the bonfire for our evening. We took a small inside break for Grannie's birthday cake though!

Grannie and the clones (and dogs) dancing round the fire

Sunday morning we had a big breakfast of French Toast and spent most of the day walking in the woods, chipping piles, clearing trails and enjoying the beautiful weather and surroundings. In the afternoon we drove down the road and across our neighbor's land to get access to our land on the other side of our creek. We worked for a while clearing some trails back there with the hope that in the coming months we can re-establish a trail to another neighbor's fishing pond. The previous trail was destroyed when the neighbor in between us had their land clear-cut.


Breakfast is served!





The guys on their way to work in the woods





Raley stayed behind to entertain us and help watch Pattie



Pattie was too sleepy so she took over Grannie's lounge chair.

We spent more time around the campfire, ate grilled hamburgers, and looked at the stars until time for bed. We found some coyote bones, a centipede, a frog, a small snake, lots of mushrooms, some beetles and some grubs. We also saw lots of different kinds of birds and could hear a lot of animals we never saw. We took a lot of pictures and I am even in a few! We even managed not to have any catastrophes! The closest we came was Raley getting a thorn of some sort that went through his shoe into his toe. He limped around (unless he didn't think anyone was looking) and even fashioned some crutches out of bamboo for a day and Jayme made him sleep in the big tent in case it started to hurt him in the night but it didn't.


I love this picture of me and Clay



We left Monday afternoon for home and to get ready for the 4-day school week during which I subbed for the same teacher all week. It took me most of the weekend to catch up on laundry and housework so that's my excuse for how long this took to post. I hope you enjoyed the glimpse into our fabulous family time. With Jayme's work schedule not allowing for vacation from now until the end of the year, it was our last hurrah insofar as weekend travel goes. I know I will remember this trip for a long time and I'm sure the kids will too.