Magic and Mayhem

We’re back from Victoria’s first annual camping party.  It was such fun!

The trip didn’t go off without any hitches.  My car died on the highway about 5 miles before we got to the park.  Luckily we had taken two vehicles since we were bringing two little girls, so Daryl was able to come back and help out.  He took most of the kids and I stayed with the car.  One of Anna and Victoria’s friends stayed back to keep me and baby Alex company.  We watched horses and butterflies for a very long time!

My fantastic friend Jeanne came out and helped us tow our car back to the nearest town (she happened to grow up nearby) and helped us find a trustworthy mechanic.  Everybody seemed to be leaning towards a broken fuel pump, which is unfortunately spendy.  We left it with Rick and hoped for the best.  Then we loaded all of our stuff in the other vans and headed out again!

We got to the camp and the kids all happily ran off to play.  One of the families came all the way from Nebraska for the trip and we don’t get to see them nearly enough.  It was so nice to get to visit with some of my favorite people and have my kids able to visit with some of their favorite people at the same time.

Here’s the back of one of my favorite people, Tiffany.  Goof!  She wouldn’t pose from the front. 

One of the other moms ended up feeling sick and that family went home after a few hours.  That was glitch number two.  Glitch number 3 was when Jeanne’s poor mom came out to visit and accidentally backed over a small sign!  :)  It made a terrible racket and got caught up under her car, but Jeanne saved the day and all was fine.

Despite the glitches, the camping party itself was so much fun!

We had 4 families and 2 extra kids total.  Ages ranged from 1 to 11 and it was a nice mix of boys and girls.  Everybody seemed to have fun (adults and kids!) and the only complaint on day 2 was that we had to go home too soon!

The kids played at the two parks, hiked in the woods, played sports, made up games, got soaked in a sprinkler they found, told silly scary stories, roasted marshmallows, pretended to be wolves, found snail shells and coyote bones, and generally played and played.

I also had an abundance of great babysitters to play with Daredevil Baby…

Don’t worry, he loves that thing. 

We’ve decided to try to make it an annual tradition!

And the best news?  The next day when we checked on the car the mechanic said he couldn’t find anything wrong with it.  He said it must have been a vapor lock and he didn’t want to “just throw parts at it” and waste my money!  What a guy!  I picked it up and the grand total for his work was $20.  It drove home fine so I’m crossing my fingers that it will work okay from now on.  I do plan on googling vapor locks quite a bit before I go out alone though!