What we did instead

The dental office has four weeks of vacation every year. We spent the first one in July enjoying the Fielding Reunion. This week is the second vacation and we all had tickets to travel to Washington for the Casper Family Reunion and a few days in Priest Lake Idaho at his parent's cabin.  Brent's family planned a huge party tomorrow evening to celebrate his mother's 80th birthday. Everyone will be there.  

Everyone except us. My doctor asked me not to travel right now. Especially flying with 5 children on my own since we were going to be taking a longer vacation than my husband was able to. So I canceled the trip and have been dealing with sad children ever since. Brent was really disappointed to that he had to spend his vacation without us. We sent him to see his mom on his own. So the kids are missing out on cousin time, farm time, and a week at their favorite cabin. We were desperate to find someway to make it up to them.

So we took them camping right before Dad left town. We ran into someone who has a lake house at Winnipesauke and offered to have us stay at their associations campground. One of our children was less than thrilled about family camping and begged to be left home alone for the weekend. I am a big believer that children don't know what is best for themselves and I insisted that we were all going.  

We weren't allowed to have a camp fire, which was disappointing.  So we brought the pancake griddle of course. This time we had electrical outlets right in our camp and Brent didn't have to flip pancakes outside the restroom on an extension cord (as he has previously been known to do).  Everyone has asked me how I possibly could go camping on bed rest. But when we camp I truly have a break. Brent does all the cooking and cleanup. It was a little messy at the dinner table as you can tell, but it didn't bother me half as much as it does at home. 

 When he wasn't tending to camp duties the dentist enjoyed doing absolutely nothing on the beach. He usually hates family days at the beach and I was pretty worried that he would go crazy with nothing planned for the day since I am not up for much lately besides sitting around. But Brent had just starting reading  "John Adams" a big book I made it through on bed rest and highly recommended. So we were all happy on the beach. I even went in the water. I float so well nowadays. . . for some odd reason. .  that it hardly took any effort to float/swim out to the dock a couple of times with the kids.  The lake was so much warmer than the ocean we are used to. And clean and clear. I am in love with Lake Winnipesauke. .  . just like I always knew I would be when we planned to move up near it.

Marcus ran into a bully on the beach. He is the younger boy in red shorts in the picture.  He kept getting after Marcus for touching his sand tunnels. Marcus just stood there confused and didn't know what to do about it. Then he accused Marcus of stealing his rock. Marcus protested that it was his rock. Finally after a  minute holding it in his palm debating he handed it over to the young kid, saying, "All right you can have it" The punk picked it up, looked him straight in the eye and said, "TOO LATE" and tossed it away. Then he started in again telling him to get off the canal he had dug. Savannah and I were cracking up watching the whole thing, especially since Savannah was the one who had dug out the canal in the first place for Marcus. That's when Marcus's daddy happened along.  He told him he would dig his son the best one ever. All the way down to the water. So here they are. The little kid was digging away trying to keep up with Marcus and his Daddy. 

 Camille is the one in shorts and T-shirt. She brought about 10 changes of outfits camping but not a single swimsuit. Caroline on the other hand forgot to bring a change of underwear. Kennon gave me quite a lecture for letting them pack for themselves. No one wanted to sit by Caroline on the way home after finding out she had been wearing the same panties for four days. 

 Once again we met up with protests when we announced that we would be driving home by way of the state of Vermont. We had missed church that morning and Brent and I were determined to salvage the Sunday by taking them to the visitor center in Sharon Vermont. It was built there on the site where the prophet Joseph Smith was born and his family once farmed. The grounds were beautiful and I didn't even have to tell them I was on bed rest to get the golf cart tour of the old farm.  This is how we all looked after camping for a two nights. Caroline may have forgot panties but she had stashed in a nice Sunday dress in her backpack. 

They built this monument in 1905 to commemorate the 100 year birthday of our prophet. The farm is located up a steep hill and it was quite a job to bring these enormous pieces of marble all the way up the hill in the winter on wagons. Marcus fell asleep during the movie and was great the rest of the tour. It was a wonderful experience and I felt more than made up for skipping church. 


So just another reason to visit the Caspers. We will take you camping with us on Lake Winnipesauke and throw in some great church history on the way home.