She's one years old - and we survived 4 nights camping!!!

We can't believe it, sweet pea's already one year's old! We left on July 1st for Chain of Lakes state park in northwest Illinois. After dinner with some friends, we had cupcakes and sang happy birthday. Of course, daddy and I forgot the video recorder... oh well.

It was super fun. A great weekend visiting with friends. It's so wierd to think that just three short summers ago, there was only one child between the four couples!!! Now, there are 6!

It rained just a bit during the 5 days/4 nights. We survived it pretty well by hanging out in our tents for awhile and waiting for it to pass. That day, we found a big mall and had the kids run around. We then headed out later that night to try and find fire works - with no luck. We were pretty worried about getting locked out of the state park, which closed it's gate at 11:30. We would have had to walk three miles to our campsite, with sleeping kids and no flashlights :) HA!!! We decided to walk around lake geneva and eat ice cream (nice compromise, if you ask me).

Sweet pea sleeps in her own sleeping bag, which works pretty well throughout the night. When she's 'falling asleep' it's a little tricky because she's crawling all over the place. We just go in when we are ready for bed and pick her up and put her in her bag for the night. Last time we camped, in May she had JUST started crawling so she slept well in between us. Now, she has to sleep on an end because she rolls to much and likes to plaster herself against something to sleep. Next summer, she'll probaby be able to unzip the tent, who knows what we'll have to do then!!! The three other couples brought pack 'n plays for their babies/toddlers... I guess we'll need a bigger tent to fit the pack 'n play?! Thank goodness my aunt and uncle were kind enough to watch Jake (the dog) for us for the weekend! It would have been tight quarters, especially when it rained!

I should go... back to reality tomorrow. Hubby's heading to work, I'm tutoring in the morning, and I still need to unpack the camping stuff and disinfect everything :)

few more pics :

"mommy... mommy... Mommy... MOMMY?!!!" (sweet pea didn't want to be ready for bed... I don't think she liked the fact that we were all laughing and I got up to get the camera)

Our friend's little girl was so good with sweet pea, we wanted to take her home with us. She was reading to her in this pic... and sweet pea LOVES her books! Favorites are any cardboard lift the flap books and the touch and feel books, especially "playtime" because grandma taught her where her hair is with that book!!!!

This is a picture of everyone exept hubby... he didn't trust anyone to touch his precious camera and take the picture for us!!! Funny, funny man! It's while we were walking around lake geneva... around 9pm!!! I'm so impressed with the kids - there wasn't a melt down in the bunch. I'm sure they were all on the edge, but kept it in! Two of the families were from eastern time too!!! Their kids thought it was 10pm!