Starved Rock

We have been wanting to take the kids camping.  When the weather for last weekend was forecasted to be warm/hot but not to humid we decided to go for it! Gabe found a  great camp ground about an hour and a half from our house. There are closer ones but they didn’t have hiking or much to do during the day. Starved Rock is on the Illinois River and has 13 miles of hiking trails. The closest thing to Clifty Falls, from back home, that we could find.

We packed everything up and headed out Friday after Gabe got off work. The kids were excited when we got there and “helped” set everything up.

Gabe and Trinity setting up the “dinning room”  (the screened in room that covered our picnic table)

Keenan playing in the tent after we got it up

We had dinner and then needed to go to the store for ice and fire wood. We had planned on putting the food in the back of Gabe’s truck for the night so that critters would stay out of it but when we left for the store we didn’t really think about it. OOPS!! We returned to raccoons eating our bread, all of it! Sandwich bread, hot dog buns, hamburger buns and they also got our marshmallows for smores’. It looked something like this except it was dark and of course the real raccoon did not look surprised, he just stared at me shinning the flash light on him. He didn’t even stop eating! You can see the bread bags behind the log :)! So you live and you learn and what is an adventure without a good story to go with it?!?! I guarantee that Trinity will never forget the raccoons that ate our bread :)! We finally chased them all off and got everyone to bed.

Trinity and Keenan playing (at way to early in the morning) while I get them some cereal

The kids eating cereal (at way to early in the morning, did I mention that before??)

We spent the morning on Saturday hiking, 4 1/2 hours and 6 miles later we had some very tired legs (except for Keenan who got to ride on Daddy’s back) and some awesome memories and pictures to go with them.

The Overlook on top of Starved Rock, The Illinois River and Dam

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French Canyon

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Trinity building a “sandcastle” at Sandstone Point Overlook

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Tonty Canyon

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LaSalle Canyon and Waterfall

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This was my view for most of the hike :)! Look at my girl just hiking her little legs off!!

Keenan took a nap. That hiking backpack must be pretty comfortable!!

This was our last canyon of the day, Wildcat Canyon. We were pretty tired, to say the least!

 

Fun at the campsite

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Camp Fire and Smores’

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We started our Sunday, very early again, and hiked another 3 miles to St. Louis Canyon and waterfall.

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St. Louis Canyon

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Nature we saw along the way!

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We had a GREAT time on this trip! Gabe and I are very blessed to be able to do such wonderful things with our kids and make such awesome memories! All the things I was worried about; Keenan not sleeping, Keenan not napping, grouchy kiddos because of no sleep, to much noise at the campground for the kids to nap and sleep at night………..you get the idea! It wasn’t a big deal, they got up earlier than they would have at home and we all ended up on the queen air mattress Saturday night, but it was enough sleep and we were still able to enjoy ourselves. We are planning on going again before the end of this season :).

Food Friday – Yummy Sugar Cookies

Oops, in all the craziness of getting ready to go camping I forgot to post this on Friday. So here is Food Friday, a few days late :)!

We didn’t have huge plans for the 4th of July but I still wanted to do something festive, so we made sugar cookies. I found a simple, and turns out, tasty recipe on allrecipes.com.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. (We made both sizes and preferred the thicker ones) Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely. (As soon as the edges start to brown, they are done!)

I made a few slight changes:

• I cut the recipe in half because we just didn’t need 5 dozen cookies for just the 4 of us!
• I tried to chill it for just a few hours but that was not long enough. I ended up chilling it overnight and it was easier to work with.
• I used powdered sugar instead of flour to keep the dough from sticking so the cookies wouldn’t end up tasting salty. It required lots because this dough is very sticky!

We of course used a festive star cookie cutter (from our Christmas cookie cutters) for the 4th of July. We added some whipped butter cream icing colored with food coloring, and some awesome sprinkles I found at Aldi for a really great price! 

I mixed the food coloring and icing, put the colored icing in baggies and snipped off a very small piece of the corner to act as an icing bag. This worked much better than bowls with icing knifes, which is how we decorated Christmas cookies last year. Much less clean up!

Here are some of the fancy cookies my artistic husband decorated:

An American Flag

The Statue of Liberty

 

Trinity’s favorite approach was to squeeze as much icing as you could get to come out of the bag onto the cookie and cover it with as many sprinkles as you could! She had a blast :).

 

Try it and let me know what you think!

A dinner prepared in PEACE!

Last night I made this yummy looking thing for dinner! It’s French bread pizza!

The most important ingredients were peace and quiet!!  How you ask….

My children were home, in the basement, doing this:dragging out every toy and watching Winnie the Pooh!

Yes, I bribed them down there with Winnie the Pooh and said “play and watch”!  Keenan mostly played and Trinity mostly watched but they let me cook dinner in peace! I really needed it!! They have been in “moods” for several days now, I think they are having withdraws from VBS. Last week we had so much going on that was fun and exciting and this week was a little more back to normal.

This was one of those “ya do what ya gotta do to survive” things!

Just a little note; the basement still looks like that :)! We will clean it up ……… well who knows when but it’s okay because it’s just the basement!

Keenan's First Boat Trip

We finally got Keenan out on the lake!!  Last season we didn’t boat because of moving at the beginning of the summer and the first time we tried to take him out this season, the boat wouldn’t start! No worries :), we just needed to rebuild the carburetor, it’s a good thing my wonderful hubby knows about these things!

So onto THE day! He was a little unsure at first but was thrilled to see all the other boats out on the lake. I don’t think he realized that he was on one too :). He tested out his new fishing pole, all he caught was a tire :)! (His Lightning McQueen fishing pole came with a little black tire to practice casting with.)

He played, tractors of course, in the cabin to get out of the sun for a little bit.He warmed up to the water a bit by sitting on the transom with Daddy.Then he decided to dip his feet in.   He loved playing on the “island” with Trinity and Daddy! It's like their own little mini-pool. It makes life a little easier for Mommy and Daddy too. Then he decided to brave the lake with Mommy! One of his favorite things to do was “drive” the boat!!

Trinity really enjoyed our first time out on the lake this season also!! She was so much braver than in years past. She was very comfortable to swim around in her life jacket and play in the water.Maybe by the end of the season we can get her to jump in!!!!

After so much excitement (and no nap!) he just couldn’t stand it anymore…….GOING!    GOING! GONE!!!!!!!

High Seas Expedition

This past week we were blessed with the wonderful experience of VBS at our church. They really did a great job! Trinity, after two nights of separation anxiety :(, had a wonderful time! I worked with the 3 year olds and also had a great time! Keenan played in the nursery and Gabe helped with clean-up after dinner. It was a family affair!  Trinity’s favorite class was arts and crafts, of course!  Here are all of her crafts from the week!

But she also enjoyed the music, dancing, games and could tell you every detail of the bible stories from each night! This was her favorite Bible Buddy, Marina. She taught us that God’s word is comforting! We also enjoyed dinner every night at church before VBS started. It was yummy and I didn’t have to worry about cooking, always a bonus!    

Keenan wouldn’t join us in the picture so we snapped one of just him :)!

We can’t wait till next year!!!