Holiday Weekend

Jim had Friday off this week, so we were able to have some extra adventures. We'd planned to go up to a reservoir to go fishing on Friday, and around 7:30pm Thursday night, Jim decided we would camp too. He, Logan, Mariah, and Bryce (my niece and nephew) packed up and took off two hours later. They arrived around 11pm in the rain...I am SO glad I wasn't with them that night. The next morning they broke camp to find a better spot because the place they'd slept wasn't any bigger than our tent, and there was an amazing number of people all around...but no luck. Jim remembered that a family in our previous ward had some mountain property about a mile away, and he called them to see if we could camp on their property. They were so kind to let us set up our tent there. The spot was beautiful...AND there were no people! (Except for them because they came up that night and we shared a campfire.) I came that morning with Annie, my brother, and Aubrey (my other niece). I have to admit it was nice not having to set up camp.

We spent most of Friday fishing at the reservoir. Jim hiked us up a cliff face (sort of) so we could get to the best spot...and the least crowded. I didn't fish, but hung on to Annie so she wouldn't take a dive into the water or get injured in some other way. It was nice to sit by the water and just enjoy my girl, and she was happy for the majority of the time. She spent a lot of time tasting everything on the ground...pine cones, dirt, sticks, rocks, and even some broken glass. Logan was a great sport about it all, too. We were at that spot for four or five hours, and he was totally happy. We learned that he is a great little outdoorsman! He climbed the steep incline without a whimper with hardly any help. In fact he was thrilled to do it. It was a difficult climb; I couldn't even help the kids down it because I needed all four limbs to get myself down! Camping and fishing are truly his favorite activities. Between the two guys and all the kids they caught 7 fish...not bad. I guess it really was a great fishing spot.
These are the only pictures I took because I forgot my camera when we went fishing.

On Saturday we took our time packing up, but decided to head home early so we could have a nice nap before we attempted to go watch fireworks that evening.

After a bath and a nice long nap we all felt great.

It looked like it was going to storm, so we decided to forego the fireworks show. Since we were already out and Logan was excited to see fireworks, we stopped to buy some of our own fireworks to set off out at Jim's parents' place. We walked into the tent to discover it was the fireworks stand my dad was working at. We knew he was selling them, but had no idea where he was! We fully intended on paying full price for what we wanted, but he gave us a great deal...no charge! We couldn't complain about that.

At my in-law's we set them all off, and the kids were impressed. Logan had an exclamation of delight for most of them, and Annie either giggle or whined depending how loud they were. It started raining just when we were finishing up, too, so our timing was perfect.

I purposely dressed the kids in red, white, and blue last night, but it was unintentional for Jim and I.