Not really camping and other updates

This picture is from the end of July, I think. Carter was in Idaho for a whole week visiting Grandma and Grandpa Carter and cousins. McKay didn't have his favorite playmate that whole time and spent a lot of time with us and playing on his own. (This is on our new deck.)Sherene (Suzanne's sister) came for a visit and introduced us to a new addiction: Catan! We can't stop playing and we've bought almost all the expansion packs for it - basic game of Settlers of Catan + Seafarers of Catan pictured here after an AWESOME game... which I won.Our good friend Rachel took us to her favorite blackberry/blueberry picking spot one day. We left the boys with her husband Russ and brought all the buckets we could find, thus the Trick-or-Treat pumpkin. We brought home enough berries to make us sick of berries for a couple of months. We made enough jam to fill the rest of the freezer but still had berries on cereal, ice cream and by the handful for snacks for a week and a half. Just one more benefit of living on the Oregon Coast - Berry Country, Yum!To appease the Spirits of the Berry Bushes, Suzanne gave them a blood sacrifice - MY blood, to be specific. I got her the biggest berries though, usually with a smarmy comment like, "For you, my love - the biggest, juiciest berry on the bush!" For "Before & After" effect: The old, condemned, rotten deck.... ...and the beautiful new deck!

The old, chipping paint job......our new, sleek, modern look! Tah-dah!Here's a series of pictures from our recent camping trip. Well, I don't know if you can really call it camping. Is it camping if you don't have to pitch a tent, or sleep on the hard, cold ground with rocks in your back? Here's Suzanne and the boys on the steps of our yurt.

The inside of said yurt. Like I said, this is not camping.The next several pictures are of the boys on the playground in the campsite. When I think of camping as a boy, we played with sticks and rocks and leaves, and we liked it!Carter pretended not to notice me there with the camera, then... "Roar!"Can you believe this is in a campground?

Sitting around the campfire after a dinner of hot dogs, chips, and grapes and still happy we're camping (except there was no barrier between our camp and the next. See the lady at her campfire behind Suzanne? There ought to be some bushes or something.)The next morning and no longer happy campers. We didn't sleep very well. The boys woke up several times, the baby next door woke up several times, the bathrooms were 30 yards away and had to be visited at midnight, the sun shone through the yurt's skylight earlier than Suzanne would have liked, and I accidentally set off the car alarm at 6:30.The boys went back inside the yurt after breakfast because they were cold, and there's a heater inside the yurt. A heater.Since we were "camping" at Beverly Beach State Park (less than 5 miles from home) we had to go to the beach. But it was cold and foggy and the boys just wanted to hide inside my jacket. Since I was the only one who appeared to want to stay out, I gave in and we all went home for baths and naps.The boys swinging on the swingset that I couldn't have put together without help from Russ. And in answer to your question, it IS level. It's the yard that's not.

Hope you all enjoy the pictures. We loved looking at April's recent post and felt ashamed that we hadn't posted in such a long while.