the annual beach camping vacation

This year I procrastinated camping preparations too long, and it about did me in getting everything together for our week of fun at the Pinery in Canada. Planning out camping meals for 7 people, for 6 days, and everything you need to prepare that food is not an easy task. I need to remember that it takes a lot of time to do this! We tried out dutch oven cooking this year, and it worked wonderfully! Here is a link to where I got the recipes: http://papadutch.home.comcast.net/~papadutch/dutch-oven-recipes.htm#Recipes.
I only picked ones that said "Easy" by them and they were simple and delicious!

Almost everyday that we were camping, we packed up our lunch and spent the whole day lounging on the beach. That was definitely the best part of the trip. You would have thought these kids were at DisneyWorld with all the smiles and laughter and fun! The first two days were hot, and despite our efforts with the sunscreen, we girls all burned and had to wear shirts over our swimsuits the rest of the time. You never know if there will be waves or how big they will be on any given day. One day it was perfectly still--the first time we have ever seen it like that. It looked like the Mediterranean Sea! You could see all the tiny little fish swimming around. This utterly terrified Isabelle. No matter what we tried, we couldn't ever get her to play much in the water after that!The boys had the time of their lives dumping the cool lake water on their Daddy.
Emma taught Alex how to blow water out the noodle, and he was in heaven getting everyone!

One day it rained a little and so we stuck around the campsite. I brought a number of things to occupy the kids, but the biggest hit was a new spiral notebook for each child and a new set of markers to share. I could not believe how long these kept them busy! I have to admit, up to this point my 4 littlest kids had been marker-deprived. There will be no going back now; they love drawing with these! I am constantly in awe of what simple things can bring so much joy to children.I love photos of kids sleeping in tents!or reading. :)
No camping trip is complete without smores!On our last night up there some friends of ours drove up to spend the evening with us. They even brought us dinner! The kids were excited to have friends to play with, and after dinner we walked down to the beach to watch the sunset. It was the perfect ending to an amazing week.Jeff and I--still smiling after 5 days of camping with all these munchkins!