Home from the woods

Since I haven't blogged in 9 days, you may have been wondering if we ever came home from our camping/hunting trip to Eastern Oregon. We didn't get lost, we just arrived home to a crazy busy weekend and I haven't had any time to play on the computer. Nor will I get to much over the next couple of days seeing as that my laundry room still looks like this as of late Sunday night:

Please pray for me.

As for the trip: it was a giant success, barring the fact that it rained a few nights and our trailer leaked like a sieve - causing me to call down curses from heaven upon it and use all our pots, pans and plastic bowls available to catch the drips. It put a bit of a damper on the week. (Get it? Damp? Hardy har ;)

But besides that, and the fact that my children all ran out of clean socks well before the week was over because they couldn't seem to keep their booted feet out of the creek even though I nagged them to death about it, we had a splendid, splendid time.

our home sweet home for 7 days

Remember the stack of books I brought? I read through eight of them. EIGHT. I was in book reading heaven the whole week and my fabulous Mr. catered to it by taking the kids on hikes and road hunts and leaving me in cozy silence. In return I came out of my warm trailer cocoon at lunch time and in the evening to cook yummy camp meals and chat around the fire and we decided that since we both got to do exactly what we wanted the whole time, we're pretty much a camping match made in heaven.

With five cousins in camp my kids of course were thoroughly entertained when not out with their dad and I honestly didn't see that much of them, except for the first day when they had to do almost a week's worth of school work and I decided by noon that a home-schooling mama I was NOT meant to be.

don't let their sweet smiles fool you... there was MUCH whining, complaining, dire threats and bribing with candy going on here!

Fun with the Grandle cousins

And because collages are fun, here's another one of the rest of us at camp:

Clockwise from top left: Russ and his sister Cara, Nathan and Marvin (Tim's brother and Dad) with Russ, Tim and Cara, nephew Ben, Russ and I (in my awesome pink rain boots ;)

The highlight of the trip was probably on the last day, when our oldest nephew Ben shot his first buck, and we all got to go search for it and be there when he found it. Fun family memories I tell ya.

the whole crew minus me, the photographer, who formally apologizes for not knowing how to remove blood from a picture. Sorry about that. 

And Ben wasn't the only one to succeed in the hunt either.

I know this pic is about Uncle Nathan's spike deer but could Blake in his Carhartt overalls be any cuter???

The rest of the hunters all had some close calls and exciting moments out in the woods so still had a great time even though they didn't bag a deer. (Will you look at me with all the hunting lingo? It's like I was married to a hunting maniac or something...)

But the best part of all was the family time together and new memories created. So worth a couple nights in a leaky trailer if you ask me :)