Cabin Camping

One evening in January, I got a text from my darling friend Emily asking if the kids and I wanted to join her and her son E on a cabin camping trip during the couple of days we had off for winter conferences. There was no question. I knew that to say no would be to crush the souls of my dearest children. Emily had no idea at the time she texted that she would be making so many of their dreams come true. So instead of looking at the weather report to see that it would be cold while we would be away, I just replied in the most enthusiastic way possible: "Luca says positootly, Dude says I love camping so much. I guess that means we are in."

We woke up to a day that was cold but not too terribly bad. After a leisurely morning, Luca and I went for a walk through the woods to see what we could find. We found this cool pond. Luca and I had fun exploring, but she needed to go potty and we learned that the grass was actually a marsh and she got her foot wet so we went back. Emily and I went for a bike ride, and once we got back we were able to convince everyone to go on another adventure back to the pond.

We were surprised and delighted to find out that it was totally frozen over and had a grand ole time throwing rocks, twigs, branches, really anything we could find as far as we could onto the ice. But then I wanted to see if I could poke through the ice which would mean finding a better spot.

I may have felt like a really cool mom tromping through the woods with my gigantic stick in search of a better place to experiment/play with the icy pond. Emily thought so too.

The kids and I took turns with the big stick trying to gash the ice. (Dude's pantleg was up because he had fallen through the marshy grass into the water and that was his solution I guess.

We were able to get pretty thick chunks out of it.

We also took turns stepping onto the ice and far as we dared. It was exciting and terrifying and at the smallest sound of a crack we hopped off.

I don't know how long we stayed at the pond, but I could have stayed there all day. The kids were less enthusiastic. Sure they thought it was cool, but they didn't fall in love with it nearly as much as I did.

Not pictured is the hours of hide and go seek with the other camp kids or the bike riding they did around our area and down the hill. When asked later what their favorite part of the trip was, the bike riding won hands down. They went up that hill so many times, whooping every time they came racing back down. The afternoon turned so pleasant that I enjoyed basking in the sun on the porch while they tired themselves out on their bikes. It was magical. Everyone living their best lives all at the same time.

The next morning we woke up to rain. So before we left, we played as many games as we could, hedbanz, being one of them.

We always do have such a lovely time with Emily and her son, but this time was especially fun. As always, thank you Emily for being the fun mom and allowing me to be a fun mom by extension.