Reunion

It makes me feel old to think that we are some of the oldest people at a reunion.  But that's okay, such is life.  This camping one was fun with Jared's parents, all of his siblings and their children. It was great to have so many little kids around.  And we had such a nice group campsite, complete with a hammock, tons of dirt toys, and this ready-use teeter-totter that Paxton and all the grandkids rode on. Thanks Grandma for your willingness to get a workout!  The highlight for Paxton was probably getting to trade his shoes with his cousin for these boots.

We went to a nearby lake a couple times, for a little fishing but mostly for the kids to play in the water.  Bennett got his feet wet and played in the sand.

This was the usual scene, Grandma also had prepared a lot of activities including target shooting with bows & arrows, boondoggle, homemade harmonicas, and painting rocks. Weston brought his leather tools so we made a lot of great looking bracelets.

Bennett was happy to walk, sometimes run, freely and he was especially interested in a baseball tee and bat.  He played with  it all the time.   It's probably partly from watching Paxton and his team play this summer.  He really didn't get that dirty, but when he did it was so nice to have a shower in the trailer to bathe him.  I am now persuaded that trailer camping is as fun as tent camping.

This little guy is so cute.  Such a big personality and energy to do it all.  He seems to be a lot like his dad, who was so fun swimming in the lake with Paxton and the other kids. We had enough life jackets to keep everyone afloat and two canoes to tour the lake.

This is looking northwest from our site, since we were there during the middle of the week there weren't too many people around and it was lovely. Near here is an area that was burned by a wildfire so we were glad to still have this place to camp.

Above is the before picture of a pit fire Jared did of some of his pottery.  It was an experiment, with a little instruction from You Tube.  The copper color on the pots (they are hand thrown by Jared) is spray paint which is supposed to help give them a different color after firing.  The sawdust is to create black on the pots which you can see in the after photos.  Although Jared built the fire carefully so as not to break any pots, the large one in the back does have a large crack.  As it turns out, some areas that had copper spray paint ended up looking quite silver and a lot of the black rubbed off.  But you can see there are still some interesting smokey patterns.

Bennett climbs up onto everything now.  Our tallest chairs, the counter and dining table if we let him.  If he can't do it himself he says "up".  He can show you where his teeth, nose, ears, hair, and belly button are.  Oh, and his toes
: )

I find it really cute when he paces around the room or across the couch talking on the phone.  He also says "rawr" and tries to scare us from behind the couch.