Odell Lake Family Camping Trip

Josh and I took the kids on a short camping trip this week. Just two days (one night) but it was a lot of fun! We joined Josh's family (Josh's dad and a family friend... Grandma couldn't make it this year) at Odell Lake and Grandpa Mike took us out fishing twice. I LOVE being out there on that lake. It is SO gorgeous! The 360 degree view is spectacular of the mountains and trees, cabins, beautiful water, and boats. Ahhhh, I always forget just how much I love Odell Lake until I'm out there again. Josh and I camped there each year before we had kids, then took 2 years off when they were babies (I figured it would be more work than enjoyment during those "put everything in your mouth" baby stages.) Now that they're 2 & 4 it was just so fun to watch them soak up everything around them! :)

We arrived Monday, ate lunch, then went for a walk along the lake. What breathtaking scenery just walking the small paths along the lake, full of wild flowers and beautiful ground cover! Jude loved every time there was a fork in the path. He would stand there and say, "hmmm, which way should we go?" then we'd move forward again. :) The kids enjoyed throwing tiny rocks in the lake, riding Jude's bike, counting the camp site numbers, making smores (Whole Foods managed to have gluten-free everything for that), fishing, jumping in the tent (they thought it was a jump house), telling tent stories at night before bed, listening to the thunder, playing with Grandpa, blowing bubbles, going through Grandpa's tackle box ("toy box"), building fires, and eating meals at the picnic table in camp. It was a great experience and I'm already looking forward to going again next year!

I didn't take my Canon 5D Mark II camera since I wasn't sure how dusty/dirty it would get, and I didn't know how cold it would get at night, and I didn't want to feel like I had to carry it with me everywhere I went. So just before we left the house Josh found our old point-n-shoot Sony camera. I still remember the day we bought that cute camera 7 years ago. We had only been married a year and were on a super tight budget and saved to buy a camera that was 5 megapixels, and we paid $400 for it, which had felt like a small fortune/investment. What's so funny about that camera is that it "re-surfaces" every so often. We lost it for over a year once and then it re-surfaced again. Anyway, I hadn't used it in a really long time and we were on the road to camp when I realized the batteries were dead and there was no memory card in the old camera! Rats! :) So we stopped at the store and I hoped they still made memory cards for it... and much to my amazement they did! And a 2 gig card was only $20. Made us laugh since 7 years ago we paid a lot to have a 512mb card, haha. Anyway, I had forgotten how much I love our little camera and had a great time using it at camp!
I hope you had had a wonderful weekend!