Labor Day camping

Way back in May when the Texas State parks finally allowed us to making camping reservations again, we searched for availability at our favorite spot- Garner State Park. They had nothing during the summer, and one spot had enough days for us to stay for Labor Day weekend. Had I known that I'd be feeling worse, not better, I wouldn't have booked it, but we decided to go anyways and make sure everyone really pitched in and helped.

Since Friday was work and and school, we arrived in time to set up as it was getting dark, and make a dinner and s'mores over coals. 

Check out this sunset!

Hot dogs, spiral sliced with a cheese stick wrapped around it and held together with refrigerated biscuit dough. A pain to put together, but a tasty camping dinner!

Saturday we had a slow-moving morning with some breakfast and hammock relaxing. 

Then we made our way to the Frio River. We picked a spot that we were familiar with where we could just swim and relax, not necessarily tube and travel. We stayed there for a good 3 hours, even when it rained a bit on us! (Good thing we had packed up camp in away that was conducive to rain)

While Dan was looking for rocks to skip, he came across this teeny tiny frog! Cade found one too. Isn't it the cutest?

A few pics by the river!

We were hungry so we headed back to camp for lunch. Right as we got there it started raining again so we all made our lunches super fast and booked it into our tents. It was perfect timing for lunch and an afternoon nap. The rain cleared up around 4:00 so we played some games, relaxed and then got ready to make some more yummy camping food. 

This meal was made almost wholly by Alex. Before we left home he prepped some pizza rolls. French rolls cut in half, spread with cream cheese, pizza sauce, pepperoni and mozzeralla cheese. Wrap those babies in foil and keep in the cooler until ready cook on the fire. Success! 

Dessert was a chocolate dutch oven dump cake. Buy a devil's food cake mix, a can of sprite, chocolate chips and some mini-marshamallows, and you've got yourself a yummy camping treat.

The boys got this fire going all by themselves!

I think it's safe to say that hammocks are our favorite part about camping.

After it got dark it started storming a bit so we packed up camp again. At about 9:30 it rained for a few minutes so we thought it was time to head to our tents for the night. After a few minutes, though, it stopped so we decided to play a few more games either until it rained again or we got tired. At about 11:00 the skies opened up and we headed to bed. Thank you rain, for raining at convenient times! You kept our whole weekend nice and cool and didn't ruin our plans!

Sunday it was clear that I had zero energy left. We had another low-key morning and dropped the boys off higher in the river and set up a spot at the end for them to meet us and hang out. Dan even found a way to set up the hammock over the water!

We hung out by the river for awhile, had lunch, the boys swam a bunch and I hung out in my chair. Dan even did some rope swinging!

After that we decided to pack up camp for good and head home so we could have a day to rest and recuperate from all the packing and unpacking that camping brings. It was nice to have a change of scenery even though I still couldn't exert myself very much. And I think Dan and I might be reaching the age of RV camping vs. tent camping. Our neighbors were very loud each night and even though we had an air mattress, it's just not a very good night's sleep. We need our beauty rest! ;)

Now we're back into virtual learning, Cade has in-person marching band rehearsals this week (yay!), and Dan went back into work this morning. He's been home from the office since Spring Break too. What crazy times we live in.