On The Road To Ver-Nowhere

This last weekend we took off for two nights of camping at Anderson Park in Vernonia. I love this place because the river is so shallow and calm that the kids will play there for hours and hours. There are tons of trails to walk and ride bikes on. There's a pet store in town that the kids love to go to. It's just a fun place and not to far away. We just happened to get there during the cold weather spell that just passed through, so the kids didn't get to play in the river as much as they wanted to, but we still had a great time.

Rylie and I were walking down to the river when I asked Rylie to show me her best "America's Top Model" pose. I think she's got it goin' on.

While down at the river I looked over to see Eli doing this. If you can't tell what hes' doing just don't ask:0)

Roasting marshmallows by the fire. We loved the fire at night because it seriously felt like early winter was coming in.

One morning we were walking to the lake when Bill, the caretaker for Vernonia Lake, came driving by in his golf cart. He told the kids they could all pile on and he gave them a ride to the lake. The kids LOVED this!

Ivy is going through a crazy phase right now where she doesn't want to walk by herself when we need her to and she won't come if you call her. She just kinda turns off her ears and stops and won't do anything. Talk about testing boundaries! Well, she had one of her episodes while we were walking by the lake and she would not follow us at all, so after much coaxing,we told her to have a great life by the lake, told her how much we loved her and how much we would miss her and we went on our way. We got pretty far before she realized that she had really been left behind and came running towards us. She was ticked! Eli finally caved after hearing her cries and felt sorry for her and decided to be her rescuer. What a sweet boy! Look at her sad face:0( I know, we are such mean parents. By the way, she stayed with us for the rest of our walk and was actually happy.

Here's the kids and Matt trying to rock the dock.

Matt and Scott playing GiJoe with their sticks.

We explored around some ruins that are by the lake. There was tons of rusty metal and a lot of blackberry bushes to dodge. I had a few mini heart attacks as I envisioned one of the kids falling onto one of the rusty stakes in the ground or plummeting off of the top of the ruins into blackberry bushes, but we ended up having a great time with little injury and got some fun pictures.

Inside of the old mill we tried to bribe Simeon and Ivy with a piece of gum if they would kiss. Here's Simeon looking slightly uncomfortable with that idea. Ivy was shy, but really wanted the gum so she waited for Simeon to get ready.

And finally...Ivy's first kiss!

Ivy had another episode of not wanting to come when it was time to leave the old mill. Instead of following us out she planted herself on this piece of roofing that had fallen inside of the building. It made for a cute picture, but she can sure be a turd sometimes.

On our way back to the campground the kids picked these things...what are they called? Cattails...I think that's it. Anyways, they pretended they were corndogs. Sophia actually got some in her mouth and gagged. Silly kids!

The funniest of all was Matt standing in knee deep water wearing his snorkel gear. It helped him find the Crawdads, but he sure looked like a nerd. What a funny guy!

This is what he caught. I think he was disappointed when nobody wanted to eat them. Sorry babe, but after seeing how they have to die to become edible....gross!