In the Kitchen

Amity has been begging me to let her help me more in the kitchen. I like the idea of her helping but I am usually rushing around and another person, especially a little person, is not very helpful. Now that we are spending more time at home, one of my goals is to find more ways to involve her in the kitchen. This morning, we needed to make the Grover's 5 Cup Salad to take to Uncle Dylan's birthday dinner. The three of us donned our aprons from Lolly and snapped a picture before sending the littlest cook to her room for her short morning nap.

Back in the kitchen, Amity drained the mandarin oranges and pineapple chunks and then scooped two cups of each of the five ingredients.

She asked if she could taste each ingredient and she liked each one individually, even the sour cream!

Love this face and will try to work even harder to have her with me in the kitchen!

Girl Power

See this? These are four men that set out for a "man hike" in search of wild adventures. When you see any of them, feel free to ask them how many wild animals they encountered. :)

The women, on the other hand, set out for a gentle, mild, meek, handicap (stroller) accessible 1/2 mile hike.

We were armed with binoculars and lots and lots of snacks.

And what before our eyes did appear? A MOOSE!!!!

My camera did not zoom in while taking this picture. This moose was wading in the water on one side of this bridge and was starting to feel trapped by the hikers on both ends of the bridge. We allowed him some space and he made his way across the bridge. So crazy! And, apparently, a very rare sighting according to the park ranger we saw shortly after.

After our moose sighting, we were pumped and ready to enjoy the beauty of Sprague Lake.

About half-way through our hike, the big girls decided to start climbing rocks. Eiley was really good at climbing the big rocks. Amity mostly chose to climb the safe and small ones.

There's our moose again! This time I did zoom the camera across the lake.

There was climbing and more climbing!

 And food, of course!

 I think the girls were more impressed with the cute ducklings than they were with the moose.

 Amity found this stick and decided it made a perfect tiara.  It seemed like something Ramona would have done. 

We had a blast on our girlie hike and couldn't wait to (humbly!) tell the boys about it! :)

Root Beers, Relays, and PJs

After dinner we headed to the pavillion for root beer floats and games. Amity really liked her first root beer float!

Love this picture of Lolly and PopPop

Happy people!

Relays and three-year-olds aren't a very good combination. The sweet man directing the relay was very patient even as Amity tried to tell him about her tiara instead of following his directions.

After awhile, we just cheered loudly and returned the balloons to the big kids.

Three cousins in PJs playing with their flashlights and looking for stars

Adventurous

Back at the campground, Dylan cooked up the trout.

The kids went on lots of "adventures".

There was a bridge and a path right behind the camper that Amity, Eli, and Eiley loved to go hiking on.

Tasting trout for the first time was an adventure in itself.

Go Fish!

On Saturday, we headed to Trout Haven for some fishing. This was my kind of fishing. The only thing that would have made it better would have been them actually baiting your hook and removing the fish!

Trout Haven is an enclosed private lake next to a hotel and restaurant. The setting was beautiful and right on the river.

We started fishing on one side of the lake but weren't having much luck.

These two girls enjoyed the fishing from the stroller along with some snacks.

Becky baited her first hook and apologized to the worm!

As soon as we moved to the other side of the lake, we began to get some action.  Eli and Becky caught the first fish!

It was our biggest catch of the day!

Dylan brought in the next one.

And then PopPop!

Lolly took the girls for a stroll.

Amity tried holding the pole.  We just had a dead worm on our line so we really didn't have any expectation to catch anything.  Dennis said he didn't want to catch anything!  Then, Dylan caught another one.

But, lo and behold, guess who caught a fish?

This goes to support Trout Haven's claim that guarantees you will catch a fish...even with a dead worm for bait!

The fish were whacked, measured, and cleaned.  I couldn't believe that Amity could watch it all so closely.  The one that is right by the sink faucet had his eyes bugging out.  Poor little guy!

 Eli with his big catch

 Amity posing as if she caught it...she just wants to do whatever Eli does!

 More educational conversations with the fish guy

 Fun times at Trout Haven!