new tradition

my dear sister, our new tradition is not camping really, you see we already go camping. have you ever asked mom why? it's a lot of work to get everything packed and to figure out food. maybe we can go when you come visit.

you see when we were in our married student ward, they decided to go camping on father's day weekend. ever since then, we seem to have gone. we enjoy camping for the most part. i asked andrew if he wanted to do this every year. you know, like a tradition. the last time we went camping as a family, sterling was only 5 months old. that was nice 'cause he just sat there.

anyway, friday night we headed for twin lakes. it's about 20 mins east-ish of us. we found a nice place to set up camp....

andrew setting up our chairs. i was in the bed of the truck then i went to get down and i saw this little dog standing there. it looked like a mini pinscher, so called to andrew to find out where sterling was. he was fine and i finally just chased the dog back to his own camp, which was next to ours. they also had a boxer with them and another puppy which we let walk around until it was time for dinner. then we chased him back to his own camp.

sterling is eating dinner. since he normally eats at about the time we left, it was about 8 by the time we ate dinner. he ate some crackers, the hot dog bun and the whole hot dog! we were surprised.

sterling loves, loves anything with a steering wheel. this is how we entertained him some of the time. every time we went to get something out of the truck, he had to do it quickly so that we wouldn't have to deal with sterling wanting to get into the truck.

the thing about camping is the s'mores. sterling finally got tired of waiting for us to make them, so he tried to roast one himself. that took too long so he just went for it.

dad and son having fun before bedtime. sterling was trying to put on his hat. he can put it on by himself, but i think he was just being silly. it was a little bit of a rough night. sterling wouldn't sleep in his bed. i don't blame him since it was cold. finally we all got to sleep and slept in. well, slept in for camping anyway.

we brought the raft with us. we took it out on the lake. sterling does not like his lifejacket. he was ok for a little bit, but then he just started crying his head off. of course at this point we're like in them middle of the lake. so we paddle back to shore and i get out with him. i take off his jacket and he wants to get back into the raft. we told him he had to have his lifejacket on. andrew paddled around some more and i put sterling in the truck so that he would be happy and i could start packing things up.

while packing this pretty butterfly kept hanging around. sorry it's not closer, it kept moving.

see i told you i was cleaning up. i'm washing the dishes. i mean not that it really mattered since they were going home to the dishwasher, but it's nice to have them somewhat clean.