Camp Mornings
Mornings are pretty glorious at the campsite we had in Colter Bay Village. Group Site number 6, baby. Just go. You’ll never regret it! The light comes through the many trees carefully with intention. The air is pretty chilly for a South Texas girl, but it feels right. When I exit the tent, the kids are usually still sleeping, and there is a brother-in-law or a husband making coffee already. Then our family one by one crawls out into the beauty ready for another day. We tried to eat breakfast taquitos most mornings since they were protein packed and stuck to the ribs for the hiking. We like to take pictures too…this is probably the only time in my life when I would like to take a photo in the morning. But, you have to when you’re camping. It’s the law, dog.
There are the cooks for the morning. They are funny brothers. Those two (my husband and his brother) get into mischief together. Mattea is behind them with her tea. She is not a coffee drinker. Hi Mattea!
We are happy in the morning! There are many of my nephews above. You can see that they are both cute and super cool. Also observe the mocking of the princess chair. In the next pic is Jaymie my other sister-in-law, her husband Will, and my other brother-in-law Clay. I have a lot of brother-in-laws. Did you know? Clay received that orange camping grill for his birthday. It’s called an Ogrill. They ordered it from Campmor. We have all been glad.
In your camp in the morning, you might need a few things. You never know. Especially if you are little and cute, you might need your rain jacket, a Caprisun, and your flashlight.
One morning I followed the children as they explored, but they didn’t know. I breathed deep the fresh air, and marveled again at the light coming through the trees. When I found them, I was enchanted. I stayed back and took photos of them playing. I hoped they would always remember this. I remember a few times that I had the most fun playing as a kid, but the one that sticks out the most is when I was in a park with some good friends and it started pouring. The park transformed for us into pools and pools of chocolate milk. I knew our children were in a magical place.
If you are camping with your kids, I would highly encourage you to let them wander a bit. Of course I’m not advocating for anything unsafe, and this definitely depends on their ages. But, prepare them well, and then try to let go a little. Their imaginations will thank you.
I love this! This is our sister-in-law picture. Now, you should know that I have many more sister-in-laws who aren’t in this photo and not on this trip. I love them too. Anyways, we worked hard on this photo. We knew we would be looking very natural, and for some reason we were positioning ourselves with our legs to equalize the height. You would never know, right? Yeah, we didn’t really know either, but my husband did. He laughed, made fun of us, and then took a photo to prove it.
We are dorks. I think you should have some level of goofiness in your life. It helps when life is hard, and it is pretty fun, too.
You can see now why mornings are special in the campground. Now, eventually we had to get going, make our loaves of sandwiches, clean up the breakfast stuff and put everything in the bear box. This is when morning feels like normal. Hair has to be brushed, sunscreen applied, children counted before we headed to the hike. But this morning, we all had our swimsuits on and our life jackets packed. We were bound for a canoe adventure down the Snake River. I can’t wait to tell you about it.
To be continued…
