{camping}

We were gone camping this past weekend with Jay's family and his aunt and uncle. It was a lot of fun, but I have to say that after a few weekends on the go, I really wish that we were staying home this weekend. Instead, it is just another weekend that we will be gone and I have to pack and honestly, I'm getting kind of sick of it. The reason for our departure this weekend is some family pictures with Jay's mom's side of the family and honestly we wouldn't have to spend the weekend because the pictures are only on Saturday and not until the afternoon. But we are... because we plan to pick up my dad's boat on Sunday and bring it back home with us for a couple of weeks. I'm excited about that because it means I will be able to get out on a boat more than just twice this year, but on the other hand, it is not a pontoon boat that I will get to stretch out on, hehe! My dad's boat is just a small fishing boat, but we will take it! I'm just excited that he is letting us borrow it for a little while!

Back to my weekend of camping... We got there around 7pm on Friday night because Jay ended up having to work later than expected, but that was okay. We got the test set up and everything before it got dark out. Yes, we slept in a tent. Usually we slept in Jay's parent's camper with everyone, but because Jay's aunt and uncle were coming along for the camping experience, they took the camper and Jay and I took the tent. The original plan was to have Ayden sleep in the tent with us, but he wanted to sleep in the camper and there was enough room for him. It all worked out okay.

We did some fishing on Saturday. It's the best kind of fishing in my opinion... the kind where you cast your line into the water and almost immediately you have something. We were catching a lot of little perch, pumpkin seed, blue gill, and even a small large mouth bass here and there. Ayden and I didn't care that the fish were so little, like literally only 4 or 5 inches, but Jay and his brother Steven were after bigger fish! Jay even taught Ayden how to take his own fish off of the hook and how to put a new worm on. It was super cute! And even I got into the whole taking the fish off the hook (when the stupid fish hadn't swallowed it), but I didn't get brave enough to put more worm on it. Plus I got to use my new pink fishing pole that LIGHTS up! Totally cool, I know, haha!

I got mauled by the mosquitoes again, but that was okay. We played some fun games and may or may not have taught my six year old how to gamble, lol! We ate LOTS and LOTS of yummy camping food which included chocolaty s’more goodness! And then on Sunday morning we saw a storm coming in so we all pitched in and got everything picked up pretty fast and were out of there just before the rain really started coming down. It was kind of a bummer that we had to leave so early on Sunday (we left the campground by like 10:30am when we didn't need to be out of there until about 2pm), but I enjoyed having the afternoon to ourselves at home to relax and unpack and so forth.

There were a ton of these little blue dragonfly things flying around and I thought they were so cool looking, now I just need a macro lens to get better detail on them!Here I am with a little large mouth bass that I caught. I was the only one to catch one this little. Jay caught a bigger one that we kept the next day, but everything else we caught was either perch, pumpkin seed, or blue gill. And yes, I am proud of this tiny little fish that I caught! Hehe!Ayden and one of the many many pumpkin seed fish he caught! I was surprised that he even held it off the hook!Showing off a little perch that was caught!Here Ayden is getting ready to take the fish off of the hook for me. And yes, we made him wear his life jacket while we were out on the pier. It wasn’t that deep, but its good habit because while he is out on the pier at Jay’s grandparent’s house he needs to wear one while on the pier and he didn’t mind…And here are two pictures of the yellow lilies we have blooming in our yard. A few more days and the star gazers will bloom! I can’t wait!Props need to go to my future hubby for losing 30 lbs! He's doing great actually... better than me! I've stagnated at about 119-120lbs... That is 13lbs lost which is great and I know I'm at a healthy weight, but being home for the majority of the day now has me in the cupboards looking for snacks A LOT more than I want to be, but without the motivation to stay out or even start working out again. Jay hasn't really been working out per se either... rather he works hard all day long at work doing more landscaping than lawn cutting and burning a lot of calories that way. I think the biggest impact though has been the fact that he's pretty much stopped snacking at night and drinking like three or more sodas during the day. I'm SO proud of him and he has almost reached his goal so he can use his new golf clubs! I think he could lose another 10lbs, but I don't know if he thinks he can or really wants to so I am not going to push him. I know that he can really tell that he's lost a lot because pants that he used to wear with no belt now REQUIRE a belt with them otherwise they DO NOT stay up! Awesomeness! Like I said, I'm really proud of him because I didn't think he would stick with anything for this long or have these kind of results. Sorry to be negative, but I've seen his attempts at working out and getting back into shape before and things have only stuck for like the first week or so.

I was looking through some old pictures yesterday from high school and it brought back a lot of good memories! I couldn't believe how many pictures that I had of one of my besties and myself. She hates being in front of the camera so I was surprised that I had so many, but I was happy to see that. We had a lot of fun in high school and we still keep in touch to this day (albeit not quite as often as I'd like). I also got some of my old journals out and reread some of my entries in those and I couldn't believe what I was worried about then. It all seems so trivial now and so adolescent, but then I had to tell myself that I was only 16 at the time... that was almost 9 years ago now and people can grow a lot in nine years. And on the other hand a lot of it was pretty hilarious! Looking at it now I can't help but think how naïve I was about life. I was in a 'relationship' with someone who was absolutely NO good for me and reading my entries I could so see the signs of it, but of course I looked at everything with different eyes then. In any case, it was a good trip down memory lane. I packed everything back up into the boxes I store them in to look at another year or so from now. I tend to go in a cycle of getting those things out and paging through them every now and then. It's fun and funny! I'm sentimental like that... so sue me!

CIAO! LOVE ME!