CELEBRATING OUR FREEDOM!

WARNING LOTS OF PICTURES AHEAD!!! I always take so many and then I can't choose which ones are better than others to put on here. So here is only a few of what I actually took. :)

We didn't travel far out of town for our Independence Day celebrating, we decided to go camping and to the beach. So we camped at Ochlocknee River State Park, in Sopchoppy, FL, and went to St. George Island State Park, Florida, beach then back to Sopchoppy for fireworks at the city park.

I remember going camping as a kid, and I enjoyed it I think. (Except maybe for the time when we went to Bear Lake in Utah, and I had an allergic reaction to Penicillin, and got a whole body rash, that was very uncomfortable).

Anyway, so I thought we would leave after I got off work on Thursday and camp Thursday night and Friday night, then the kids would go spend time with Matt on Saturday and Sunday. We got to the campsite at about 8:30 pm, so I put up the tent in almost total darkness, (let me tell you that was so much fun)! I had Chandler help me a little, but the bugs were swarming and I hadn't sprayed any of us with bug spray so I tried to just let them explore the camp site, or sit in the van. There was a really cool tree that they were climbing on that had really long branches at our site. Hayden found the fire pit and was trying to see what he could do with that. Then Chandler and Owen were trying to find some wood so we could build a fire. Which didn't happen, by the way. It took me till almost 10pm to get the tent up, all the bedding in it, and get the boys showered. I was glad I put it up at home the day before, so I kind of knew what I was doing. This is the first time I have ever been camping by myself. (Which I got in trouble for later, by a friend of mine, at church. She said I shouldn't have gone by myself). And I told her that I am a big girl, and I can take care of me and the boys. But she said yes, but there are big boys out there too that could have come and hurt one or all of us. Well, nothing happened and I wasn't worried. I had fun, I hope we can go again soon.

Here is what the campsite looks like in the daylight. It was a nice little spot, my van sat to the left of the tent, and the picnic table is behind the tent. I like this park, we'll probably go back there again sometime. It was pretty full of people, but everyone was nice, and we actually saw some members of our ward at the same campsite, they were spending the weekend with their grandkids. I thought that was cool, we were about 90 miles away from home, and to see someone that I know from the same town I live in, made the world feel just a little bit smaller.

By the time all that was done, everyone was pretty tired, so the nice mom that I am brought the dvd player so they could have their non school night evening ritual of a movie, and let them watch Shrek for about 20 minutes till they were almost asleep. Here is a picture of the boys in the tent just before they went to bed. Hayden Thoroughly enjoying his time in the tent. He was so excited, all he talked about the whole week was going camping and going to the beach.

Chandler and Owen were enjoying Shrek before they go to bed. They were ready to get inside as soon as I got the tent up. And I am now realizing that we may have a 4 person tent, but with 2 kids that don't sleep in the same position (Hayden and Owen), I think I will be investing in a bigger one, SOON! :) I had Chandler and Owen at the biggest part and then I laid across the tent down by their feet and put Hayden in the smaller extra area next to me. Well, Hayden wanted to be right up under me, and Owen kept turning and moving closer to me. It was crazy, and it was a little warm outside, so I wasn't where I wanted to have two kids touching me all night. So the first night wasn't so great for me. Plus, I didn't have an air mattress just an egg crate topper and some blankets, and the ground was good and hard. I think I'll have to get an air mattress too.

Anyway, once the temp. started to go down a little it was pretty comfortable. We woke up the next morning pretty much as soon as light was coming into the tent. I brought stuff to make pancakes, so I started getting that ready while the kids were starting to wake up in the tent.Chandler was watching the pancakes for me. He was so hungry, they could not cook fast enough so he could eat them. I usually make waffles, so I made these instead, and they were really good. I think I might make these more often now. Good morning boys, now their belly's are full, so we can get ready to go to the beach! YEAH!!!
Unfortunately the trip to the beach took a little bit longer than planned. Next time I will find out what time the parade is, so that I can get off the bridge before they close the road onto the island. I don't undersdand how someone could close the only road onto an island for a parade. And apparently I wasn't the only one, a lot of the people that sat on the end of the bridge for 30 minutes along with us weren't very happy either. The guy in front of me actually passed everyone on the other side of the road to get up to his destination. I was not that crazy. And also, I had seen police cars, and an ambulance pass by, so I thought there may have been an accident. So we waited, and waited...of course after being in the car for an hour the boys wanted to get out, and they were hungry. And seeing the ocean and a beach out the window really made Hayden want to get out and go swimming. I took these on the way out of the park. I always see the big panoramic of this beach in the picture stores in the mall, and I knew I could take one kind of like it, so this is mine. I think that will look good blown up an hung on my wall either in my bedroom or in my beach decor bathroom along with my sunset one. When I walked up to the edge of the beach to take the bottom shot, I think the Someone made the waves start to come in, so that I could get a good shot. Becauase before I walked up there weren't very many waves. But as soon as I started to take pictures the waves started to roll in. It was so beautiful, and this beach was deserted except for two fisherman about 25 yards away from me. We finally made it after waiting 30 minutes for the parade route to clear. At first there weren't very many people at the beach, but later on it got a little full. It still wasn't as bad as I thought, maybe because we went to the second set of pavillions, most people stop at the first. So we picked a spot and laid out the blanket and our stuff, and in we went. Hayden didn't get too close to the water without me, but Chandler and Owen got into the ocean and played happily for a few hours. Hayden let me take him out into the water till he couldn't touch, but I don't have any pictures of that because I was nervous about letting Chandler take pictures with my expensive camera near the water. I did let Chandler take one of me holding some fish, but that was the only one. I put this collage together on powerpoint today so that I could get more pictures on here. I think it will look good printed out as an 8x10, but here it's a little small to see the cool detail in the pictures.
The boys enjoyed running in the surf along the edge of the water. They had so much fun playing around and goofing off. Squirting water guns, pouring buckets of water on each other, making sand castles and we sat and dug in the sand to find the really small shells that were still living. i don't know how to explain it, I don't know if they were clams or what, but they would dig back in the sand in our hands it was cool.Owen, Chandler and Hayden posing nicely for me on the beach. They were still just long enough to take this nice shot of the three of them. Man, they are growing up fast, it is so hard to believe they are 9, 6 and 3.

Owen enjoying the waves coming up to him.

Chandler watching the waves roll in before he runs into the water to play.

The two above photos I took because of an article I read about the negative space in a picture. If you look at the two pictures the face draws you to the negative space of the photograph to see what they are looking at (the water). I just thought that would be a neat shot, so I tried it, and I really like the outcome. By being behind them, I am kind of seeing what they are seeing.

Hayden was holding his ball trying to decided if he wanted to take it into the water or not. He decided to just play with it on the beach until he saw us in the water, then he came to join in on the fun. We really had a good time at the beach. I wish we could have camped at the campground there at the beach campground because we could have gone and rested and then gone back and played some more, but our site was 45 minutes back so we couldn't do that. So we only stayed about 3 hours before the boys were tired and all sandy.

After we rested a bit at the campsite we went on a nature walk. This is just a quick one of the boys as they walked along the path in the woods.

As we were walking along the road on the way back to the tent we saw 8 doe hiding in the trees, and then they crossed the road right in front of us. It was so cool to be that close to them. Two stayed on the right side of the road in the trees but the other 6 crossed in front of us to the other side. I have never been that close to a deer before except for the zoo. I wonder what other kinds of animals were around us at the campground.
Here's some of the fireworks we saw in Sopchoppy. We have been here before, back in 2005, but we had bad seats behind some trees. They shoot the fireworks off by the river, and so I tried to get a better seat this time. I think I did ok, a few were still behind some trees but mostly we could see them. Hayden was really scared. I have to admit the booms were VERY loud, I almost had to cover my ears. They shook the ground they were so loud. But they were really pretty, and we had a great time.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY 2008 AMERICA!

WE ARE PROUD TO BE AMERICAN!!!!