A View from the Edge: family camping

Monday, August 8, 2011

I'm Baaak!

You probably didn't even miss me! It's great to have the posts all set up in advance! Now I'm busy playing catch up! I may not have a chance to comment on all your posts, but I'll try to read all of them!

We left last Thursday and drove up to Minnesota to spend the weekend with Jim's family for the annual camping trip.

Here are a couple of odd things I saw along the way:

First is a castle:

It recently opened as a Bed and Breakfast.

Did you ever see a Hummer fly?

We drove near a military base that must have been doing some kind of training exercises. This helicopter flew RIGHT OVER OUR TRUCK. There was a moment that we all thought, "OH SHIT", hoping the Hummer wouldn't accidentally fall off.

Some funny photos from the weekend:

My brother-in-law Al, who never graduated from drinking from a sippy cup.

The winged warrior: my niece "C" showing me her shoulder blades. Ouch!

My other niece, "G", showing off her blue/purple hair. Is this because she is studying blue jays in her PhD program I wonder?

Red-haired great-niece, baby "A", in honor of Lucille Ball's 100th birthday with her father, Eric.

Twin sister of "A", great niece "B" putting on the moves for everyone. (left to right, Barb SIL, "B", "Mo" niece, Shawn nephew)

Nephew "M" with that "Jiffy-Popped" expression! (Niece Becky and husband Shawn in background)

These funny shoes are worn by our eldest son, Jeff. They are called "toe shoes." Of course, you must wear "toe socks" inside. They look like gorilla feet to me.

Have you seen this monstrosity of a marshmallow?

photo credit

Unfortunately this isn't from my campfire. I didn't get a picture of ours. But believe me, they were the same size! They definitely are messy!

Then someone else brought out these funny looking marshmallows.

Weird looking. Like someone sat on the bag and smooshed them all. The directions said to wrap the smores up in foil, but we tried it this way. It didn't work....the crackers burned. Then the kids tried roasting the marshmallows on sticks. Although it was tricky to get them on sticks, it DID work.

Here is my OTHER granddaughter, Lauren, roasting a marshmallow.

Meet the newest addition to the group, baby "K".

And finally, here's the whole damn bunch of us. Well, those that made it to the camp-out, anyway.

Family Fun

Our annual family camping weekend consisted of 25 adults, 2 children, 3 babies, 11 tents, 1 trailer, hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken, kabobs, beef, pop, water, booze, booze, oh, and did I mention, BOOZE? People came from Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Florida, and North Carolina.

Just sitting around shooting the breeze. The arrow is pointing to our son, Jason.

Two of my cute nieces, Carrie and Becky.

Camping is all about roughing it. Here is my nephew, Eric, changing one of his babies on a camping chair.

Isn’t she just adorable?

This is my daughter, Jessica, brushing my granddaughter, Lily’s teeth, with no water, OUTSIDE!

One night Ron and Karen brought out two sets of "skis". Each ski had 4 handles attached to ropes. So picture a person putting a foot on each ski. Now picture FOUR people standing on the SAME set of skis, and holding the ropes. This is what it looks like.

The object of this "game" is to have everyone lift their feet at the same time and move forward. Sound easy? Uh, it's not. The leader calls out "Right", "Left". Ideally when the word is called out, you would lift the correct side with the handle, bend your leg, and thrust forward to move the ski forward. I laughed so hard that I couldn't catch my breath. At one point my sister-in-law, Dorie, who is standing behind me in the picture above, fell off the skis, and the ground wasn't level. That's all I saw was her butt and legs up in the air. It was hysterical. Then she had to scramble up and get back on the skis as we were racing the other team. Although if you look in the background of the photo below, you can see that they weren't doing too well either, as someone is lying on the ground! Click to enlarge the photos to see the true silliness of this!

Nothing like a good campfire to sit and gaze at, or roast marshmallows for smores.

Usually smores consist of graham crackers, Hershey's chocolate squares, and roasted marshmallows. Karen introduced me to Keebler fudge stripe cookies

Just use those and marshmallows and call it a day! They also went back to the old fashioned way with graham crackers, marshmallows, and instead of the squares of chocolate, used Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. They are the connoisseurs of Smores!

I played around with the fire photo above in Paintshop Pro to get this.

Another night we all made ice cream in ziploc bags. It was a lot of fun! Here's the recipe:

What you'll need:

a.. 1 tablespoon sugar
b.. 1/2 cup milk or half & half
c.. 1/4 teaspoon vanilla
d.. 6 tablespoons rock salt
e.. 1 pint-size plastic food storage bag (e.g., Ziploc)
f.. 1 gallon-size plastic food storage bag
g.. Ice cubes

How to make it:

1.. Fill the large bag half full of ice, and add the rock salt. Seal the bag.
2.. Put milk, vanilla, and sugar into the small bag, and seal it.
3.. Place the small bag inside the large one, and seal it again carefully.
4.. Shake until the mixture is ice cream, which takes about 5 minutes.
5.. Wipe off the top of the small bag, then open it carefully. Enjoy!

Tips:

A 1/2 cup milk will make about 1 scoop of ice cream, so double the recipe if you want more.

Here's the group making the ice cream.

If that wasn't enough ice cream, there was an ice cream CAKE for my son-in-law, Dave's, birthday.

We all sang Happy Birthday to Dave. Here he is talking and cutting the cake at the same time. He's so multi-talented!

You may have noticed that we're all wearing the same shirts. No, we don't have the same taste in clothes! It was time to order a new T-shirt; it's been about 10 years since our last shirts came out, and some of us, ahem, have grown out of them, and there are always new members joining the family. Like these cutie pies.