Camping

Our last camping trip for the summer was with our friends the Rawlings and was a blast. As soon as we got there we set up a hammock that no one except Mom knew we had and enjoyed it.

The next day after all the unpacking and nightly activities were over, we caught a toad after seeing a few huge ones in the dark on the way back to our campsite.

We also saw hundreds of half tadpole toads and caught and released them too.

Here we are on a hike to a dam shortly after the frog catching.

In the afternoon we went swimming in the lake. Farther down from our spot we found a rope swing over the water that the Rawlings went over to. Later me, Dad, Emily, and Lisa decided to walk over there to join them, while Mom, Amanda, and our camera stayed back at the old spot for the rest of the time. No pics of the rope swing, but we did get a few of Amanda in the water.

After dinner that night Dad arranged a fire building contest. If this stupid blog would let me post videos, I would show the fire building and match lighting tutorials, but like I said, the blog won't let me. So here are the teams: the first team was Amanda and Lauren.

Next was Emily and Sarah (for some reason Sarah is not in this picture)

And the last team was me and Kelsy.

So how this competition worked was each team built a fire under two strings tied on sticks (as shown in the pictures). Then we would have to light a match and start the fire at the same time, and whichever team's fire burned through the two strings first won. In the end Lauren and Amanda won, Kelsy and I came in second, and Sarah and Emily came in third, though they were the first team to burn through one string (again, I would show the video to see all the action but I can't) :S

After the campfire that night, we woke up and went on a hike as just the Richael family before packing up and leaving.

We saw lots of beautiful waterfalls on the hike (although you can't see it very well in the picture)

And, as one more exciting event, we came home that day to the first garden sweet corn of the year! This is close to a holiday at our house! :)