The Rainbolts

 Saturday afternoon we went over the Sarah's in-laws house for her birthday celebration.  They grilled out and we had a delicious dinner and dessert.  The kids played and played together and we all hung out outside because it was so nice that evening.

 Last Saturday, Benton had a Cinderella in the City Day.  A local church opened their fellowship hall and several businesses participated and had fun things for the kids to do.  In the fellowship hall they had different stations throughout it that were fun for little girls to do.  They had stations for painting your fingernails, getting your hair done and sprayed with glitter, coloring stations, pictures with a monkey, pictures with Cinderella and the Prince, and a tea set up.  The pictures cost money but everything else was free.  The local businesses had balloons and games for the kids and drawings to win things.  Eden had a great time but didn't want her picture taken with the monkey or Cinderella.  Truth be told she wasn't very impressed with the Cinderella and Prince that they had (see picture below).

Last weekend Michael, Eden, and I went on our first camping trip.  Several families from our church class got together and went to DeGray Lake National Park and camped.  We had the absolute best time ever.  We left Harper with my parents.  I'm sure she would have loved it too but it was so nice to not have to worry about her getting down for naps and so forth.  We got to the camp area around six on Friday night and stayed two nights  and got home around one on Sunday and then picked up Harper.  The Haustein's let us borrow a tent so we could try camping without having to spend tons of money if we didn't like it.  Well we loved it.  They also let us split food costs since they had all the supplies to cook with and Hans is a professional camp chef=)  They completely spoiled us by having our tent put up when we got there and cooking (gourmet meals) for us all weekend.  No wonder we had so much fun!

There were seven families that went (us, the Haustein's, both Bittle families, the Dyniewski's, the Neese's, and the Hawkin's).  I think having other families around made is so much fun too.  Eden played nonstop with all the kids the entire weekend.  I feel like we never saw her because she was having too much fun with everyone else.  On Friday night, we got there and had a fabulous dinner prepared for us (bacon wrapped chicken, corn on the cob, and baked potatoes with all the fixings) and fixed the inside of our tent up.  It tried raining a few times but only sprinkled which was great. The weather that night was perfect and felt incredible.  People slowly started arriving on Friday night and setting up their things.  We did s'mores and hung our around the fire until about 10:30 pm and then we started going to bed.


Saturday we woke up and hung around camp for a little bit.  Hans fixed us awesome breakfast burritos that were awesome and coffee.  The park offers free activities so several us went to a wildflower thing and the girls and some boys made wildflower necklaces.  Then after lunch we went to the lake front to swim and tube off of Matthew's boat.  It was the best time.  After swimming and tubing, everyone had a big cookout together.  We all had hamburgers and hot dogs, chips, other sides, and a peach and blueberry cobblers that were made in a dutch oven.  They were delicious.  Of course, we also had s'mores again when it got dark=)  Saturday night was much warmer in the tent but we slept fine.  Eden snores really bad so I had her in my ear all night long.