Pacific Lake

Covid 19 forced the camping resorts to close down and when they were finally able to open and allow reservations this spring... everything booked up immediately.  So, we weren't able to find any vacancies for Memorial Day camping.  Jason found this 'first come first serve' camping site at Pacific Lake, just past Odessa. He left early Friday to find a spot and I met him there with the kids after school. I think at one point this was probably a really popular camping site, but the water source has dried up. What was once a nice lake has diminished into several small ponds now. We had a blast camping though! We were the only campers there. Total privacy. Tons of hiking and exploring. We found sea shells all over the beach (very strange since I would expect to find them at an ocean, not a lake?).  Turtles swimming in the ponds. We roasted marshmallows for smores, road bikes, hiked, relaxed in the hammocks, Connor wrote more in his book, we played board and card games, we had target practice with a sling shot and rocks, every night we had a laser gun war... we all had a very good time! Piper liked being off leash and running around and she loved the 4 person massage she got every night as we picked through her fur to pull off ticks. We put her flee/tick repellent on the day we left for camping and later found out it takes 48 hours before it starts working. Luckily she's a white dog and the ticks are easy to spot. We easily picked 50 ticks off her from Friday - Sunday. I found 1 tick on Kaiden as well. Since I had time to spare waiting for the kids to get out of school I baked some banana bread, which finished cooking right before we left. I wrapped it up and we all enjoyed some fresh, warm chocolate chip, walnut, banana bread when we got to the camp site.

May happenings

1. Connor showing all the neighborhood kids his toad.  2. Piper snuggled into her bedtime spot next to Connor with her pillow and blanket.  Such a spoiled dog!  Connor stays up for 30-45 minutes each night to either read his book or write in his book (he's writing 2 books of his own).  3. Kaiden and Alex chillen in our front yard listening to music. 4. this last week Jason and I painted our front covered porch.

 

baseball

 Kaiden loves baseball.  His team is the Giants, orange team, #2.

Jabba swims

 We let Jabba swim around in the bath.  Connor loves this toad. If we go anywhere the first thing he does when we get home is to check on his Jabba.  Every morning he asks me to feed Jabba a worm while he's at school.  We recently swapped Connor and Kaiden's dressers, so Jabba is now in Connor's room. Which is good since he gets up 30 minutes before Kaiden every morning for school and he would always check on Jabba in Kaiden's room.  Oh and we discovered that Jabba makes a squeaky noise.  The boys were at school this week, Jason was in a meeting in the den, Piper was napping on Connor's bed and I was using the computer in Connor's room when I heard a squeaking noise.  It sounded like a dog squeaky toy... only Piper was sound asleep.  The only other living creature was the toad, Jabba.  Then when we put Jabba in the tub to swim he/she made the squeaking noise a few times for all of us to hear. We also did some research and we think Jabba might be a female toad.  Plus more pictures from Kaiden's baseball practice this week.