Camping at Pokagon

It's definately fall around here again, and that means weekend camping trips!  Now that we don't have soccer interrupting our weekends, I'm hoping we'll take a few more trips.  For this trip we went to Pokagon state park in Indiana.  We camped in our favorite campsite... the one with the big rock!

 The kids also love the nature center at the park.  We went on our first nature walk with a guide.  We learned a lot - most especially how to correctly identify posion ivy!  We got a new saying "hairy scary".  good to know :)

 Zachary made a milestone lately - he can now conquer the monkey bars!!  That is very exciting (but also sad because he's not so much a little boy nowadays).  He did a great job, made it to one side and back again.

 We also went on a hayride around the campground.

 We all had fun - until the driver scolded everyone for causing straw to fall out of the wagon.  Geez, what a crank!

 Even though Sydney was really hoping to find many caterpillars, we only found one wooly bear.  We brought it home, but it's not looking so good.  We did find a little frog that was really cute too.  Thank god the kids let him go.

 The kids stayed up really late riding their bikes around.  Well, at least 9pm seemed pretty late since it was so dark out (and chilly!).

 Nighttime is also time for s'mores.  Yum yum yum!  My favorite :)  The kids even had theirs the "right" way this time, with toasted marshmallows.  They liked them, but they still like eating all of the parts separate.

The kids did stay up until 10:30 both nights, so that was late for them.  But with the heater cranked in the camper, we all sleep in pretty late, so I don't mind too much.

 Sunday morning we went down to the beach.  We were surprised to see 4 beautiful swans swimming in the lake.  When we first saw them we thought they were fake!

 The beach was empty - but still a fun place to explore.

 They begged Daddy for a super push on the swings.  Hang on tight kids!!

 This is a pretty cool picture because Sydney took it.  I don't know if she purposely tried to get me off center or not, but I think so.  I think some of my random mumblings about shooting pictures has rubbed off on her!!

 A beautiful day at the Inn as well.  Some day we will stay at the Inn for the weekend, to see how the "other half" lives :)

Running update

Today we ran the Boy Scouts Half Marathon race in Bowling Green.  I knew Alan was going to be running it, and I saw it was a smaller race, so I thought I might have a chance of scoring a 3rd place medal, so I decided to sign up too.  Sometimes I have those crazy ideas *after* my good runs :)

The weather was starting to cool down so it seemed like the perfect time to run a race.  Much to our surprise, the weather kicked back up in the 90's right before the race, and on race day the forcasted high was 94 degrees!  Well, no problem, just try to run it easy and not hurt ourselves was the plan.
Since it was so hot Alan ran with no shirt and I just had a sports bra on.  That was a nice change because quite frankly, I would run in my sports bra everyday if I could - I hate to have the feeling that I am overdressed or getting hot because of my running gear.

Once the race got started Alan was no where in sight of me, so I just kept running the best I could.  I ran it at a comfortable pace, but knew I wasn't going to beat my PR (1:55) because I saw the little pacer dude on my watch run right off my screen ahead of me.  oh well.  I did stop at almost every water stop though, walking through them all (it was a nice break from the heat!).  By the time I had got to the end, I was running around the track and saw the finish line.  As I squinted I could see that the clock still had a 1 in front of it! (1 hour time)  I was in disbelief.  I really need to learn how to read my watch better because I was soooooo close to coming in under 2 hours on this race!  So I ran the best I could, but the clock flipped and I finished in 2:00:22.  darn!  Next time I will do better reading my watch :)

Alan also got a surprise at the finish line - he was also "taking it easy" and when he crossed the line at 1:34, he had gotten 1st place in his age class!  Not so shabby!!  It was a good race.

As we were lounging around before picking up the kids from Grandma & Grandpa's house I got a call from Sydney's BFF Morgan and they invited both Sydney and Zachary over for a sleepover!  That was great news.  I knew they would be a bit tired from being at Grandma & Grandpa's, but I didn't want to pass up the opportunity so I sent them over there for the night.  That allowed Alan and I to go to see the movie Appollo 18 (good!) and then over to Granite City for a brew.  The perfect way to end a super day!

Random pictures of the kids

A couple of nice pictures of the kids... I was playing around with my fixed lens again.  Maybe getting a little better with it :)

Bachli Family Camping Trip

Time again for our annual camping trip with my family.  Not sure why I planned this to happen in July - it was so darn hot!  We went to Maumee Bay again and my brother got a really nice shaded lot.  We will definately need to keep that one in mind for our next trip :)

The kids just love playing with their cousins.  They were running all over the place, wearing the boys out!

Here we are keeping warm around the campfire... well, not really .  We were mostly all sitting far from it, didn't need the heat.

Grandma brought along some squirt guns and the kids had a great time spraying everyone.

We went on a nature walk and found this deer.  It took me and Sydney forever to see the deer.  If you look closely at this picture, he is in the upper right hand part of it.  Little ears peeking out of the grass.  My brother and his family are super great at finding animals in the wild, whether it is a deer, or a tiny spider, they find them all!

We decided to take a dip in the lake.  I think this is the first time I've ever been swimming here.  Lake Erie just kind of creeps me out.  We told the kids that this is the complete opposite of what the water will be like in Mexico.  Note the seaweed next to Sydney!

 We spent a bit of time biking around the park.  The breeze from riding the bikes was a nice relief from the heat.

We  had a delicious dinner together.  So much yummy food :)

After stuffing ourselves at dinner, we headed over to the ice cream social!  We couldn't miss it because this time they had sundaes in addition to the usual cones and root beer floats.  They were so good, I approve!

Another fun thing going on near the ice cream social was the "nature guy".  He brought along an eastern fox snake.  Of course Sydney was right up there to hold him.  No fear here! 

We had a "slumber" party nice also, where the kids got to sleep with a parent.  I got Zachary.  He stayed up until almost 11pm the night before.  He was a late sleeper in the morning.  Looked like a litte angel. awwww

Our easy Sunday morning breakfast is now a box of donuts.  Did you notice we eat a look of somewhat unhealthy choices when we are camping??  well, that's the fun of it.  Chips, ice cream, donuts.  It's all a part of having fun and stepping outside of the norm for a weekend.

I did burn off many calories on our Saturday morning run.  Alan and I went out for 6 miles.  I think I sweated off 2 gallons of water, it was a hard run.  Also, I was challenged to a scooter race by Sydney.  On the first lap around the loop I was winning, but after that I just can't keep up with her and she beat me bad.

Here is a beautiful panaromic picture from the top of the sledding hill.  We even remembered quarters so the kids could look out of the viewfinder.

 After that, the kids raced to the bottom of the hill and ran back up.  All full of energy (and all charged up from the donuts!!)

Sydney enjoyed her role as dog watcher.  She loves Bindi :)

And then, it was time to go home again.  Seemed like a super quick weekend.  I am hoping we can all get together in September or early October for a camping trip again, when it's not so hot!



Monarch caterpillars

So our caterpillar, which we found as an egg when we were camping in NY, is now a big, hungry, hungry caterpillar!  He is chomping through milkweed leaves at an astonishing rate, so we needed to get some more food for him.  Luckily there are several milkweed plants near the bike trail.

I cracked up when I saw the look on Zachary's face in this picture.  I think it really expresses his true feelings on our bike ride on this super hot day...

 Here are the plants, ready for picking.

 Pardon the mess, we haven't cleaned up his space yet - but look, he ate the ENTIRE leaf over night!

 This is the last time we saw him as a caterpillar.  He soon morphed into a chrysalis, awaiting his turn to become a beautiful monarch butterfly!!

And wouldn't you know it, we found another egg, so we'll be raising another caterpillar in a day or two :)

Final camping day at Letchworth State Park

We started out our day with some delicious pancakes made by Daddy.  I love having him make us breakfast, it is one of my most favorite camping traditions.

Then we decided to venture out on another trail.  The kids liked hiking, althought a mile is about enough for them at this age  :)  We did see some beautiful scenery.

 We also made it on time, and went to the tour of the dam near the entrance of the park.  We tried yesterday, but were late (shocking, I know).  It was a good tour, and we got to go down inside the dam (lots of cold, pitchdark concrete).  This dam was built to be a "dry" dam, so there is no lake typically in front of the dam.  Made it look like it was all dried up and we came in the wrong season!

 

A few days ago we found one butterfly egg (after searching *many* plants) and today he decided to hatch into a caterpillar.  He was so tiny, but I know soon he'll be munching away at that leave and be a super caterpillar!!  Can you see him?  He's in the upper middle of this picture....

 At night we had a game of frisbee golf (which I totally suck at btw).

We also put the laptop out and made our own little "drive in" with it.  We watched Despicable Me, complete with smores.  That as a great way to end our camping trip.

Letchworth park, fitness and fishing

Today we decided to conquer the fitness trail that was set up at the park. Some stops were very simple: stretches.  Others were only a challenge for some of us (Lisa - balance beam, Zachary - king of balance beam).  Some were even feats of strength, like this arm walking thinging station.  I definately could not do it.  In fact, my arms were sore for almost 2 days from doing pushups!

 This was a bit of challenge for the non-coordinated people in our group :)

 Here's another scenic view of the park.

 We also went on a fishing trip today.  This is a stocked pond with Rainbow Trout in it.  However, the trout did not seem to be thrilled with our choice of bait: buns and hot dogs.

 Hmmm, they don't even want a whole hot dog!!