Campin' 09

Over the 24th of July, we went camping at Accord Lakes with my family. My dad has some property up there with a great view. It was a lot of fun. The kids didn't get nearly as dirty as I thought they would, however we had a run in with some rodents.

Here's a view of Skutumpah Reservoir from East Ridge.
The kids couldn't get enough four-wheeling, especially Sam.

The food was great!

Mom brought a sand box for the kids that they absolutely loved.

We went through lots of bubbles--a lot of them got dumped on the ground.

Mom also got coloring books, puzzles, and horses for the kids to play with.

Max also turned 1 year old on the campin' trip and got a cool turtle to ride around from Grandma.

Now, back to the rodents. Shortly after arriving, Shannon said that she saw a little gopher running around our tent. That night, we heard it running under the tent. The next night, I was laying next to the kids as they fell asleep and I heard the rodent moving by my head. I then saw a hole the size of a quarter that the pot-gut had chewed into our tent. Nick was mad, since we had just bought our tent. He grabbed a marshmallow skewer and stabbed it into the hole several times. As he pulled it out, there was a baby pot-gut stuck to the stick. We duct taped the hole and Nick listened for the pot-gut to move. With his flip-flops on inside the tent, he stomped every time he heard it moving. We went to bed that night with a hammer incase we heard it again, but we never did. As we took our tent down, we found one pot-gut mother who was smashed flatter than a pancake, and five little hairless babies. So Nick then had to take care of the babies so they wouldn't die slowly. We think the pot-gut mother was pregnant when we got there, and thought that under our tent was a nice place to have her babies. We feel bad about the whole incident, but didn't want it to chew it's way up into the tent while we slept. Meanwhile, mice kept my sister, Brooke, awake all night as they rummaged through the food in the motor home. The funny thing is that we were warned that there were less deer this year because of cougars and bears. So we lied awake all night, worried about bears growling in the woods, when it was just breathing from those around us.