As you can see, Anderson is a big thinker too! He always seems to be thinking about what kind of mischief he can get into, and this camping trip was no different. He ran around the campground always needing an adult to supervise him. But...since we were celebrating his birthday, he got away with it. He turns two this Saturday, so we had a little party early at the campground complete with a cake!
Well, actually it's not a cake, as you can see. That would be too messy and complicated. Instead, we had animal crackers (one of Anderson's favorite snacks) with birthday cake dip (a delicious recipe Holly learned about several months ago.) After some help with blowing out the candles, Anderson loved it!
Anderson has certainly grown up since his last time at the camp ground. If you recall, last time he wanted nothing to do with the big bouncy pillow. This time, since he knew he was turning two and had to man up and be a big boy, he started to be brave. He first made his way carefully up the edge...
Then he stood carefully with an adult nearby...(in this case with our pal John-Mike who camped with us for two of the days)
And before you knew it, he was bouncing like the big boys! Great job And!
Parker and Carter kept it real and got to do some big boy things that Anderson didn't get to do. One of those things was mining for rocks. Parker and Carter each got a bag of sand and they had to sift it out in a fountain to find the gemstones. They got to do this activity each day and earned a rather big rock collection.
The only hiccup was that one day Parker discovered there was a hole in his plastic bag holding his gemstones while he was walking back to the campsite. He was devastated. So I walked back the way we came and found some of the missing rocks. He then picked out a polished gemstone from the camp store with his brother to make up for the ones we couldn't find.
As you can see, the little electronic gizmos are still a distraction sometimes! To combat this, we tried to keep them busy, including taking them up to the arcade. I know, I know, that is just a room full of electronic gizmos too, but these were old school gizmos. It's good for them to be exposed to a little history.
Besides, the gizmos paid off! As you can see, each of the boys won a ball from a crane game, and it only took two dollars! It was fifty cents a play and they let mom move the crane while they pushed the button. The only mess up was the first one where Carter got over-excited and hit the button right at the get go and got nothing. After that example, where they learned that failure in the crane game can be very real and very devastating, they listened to mom as to when exactly to hit the button.
Of course its not always all fun...people got into little fights and tantrums, as this picture represents. Sometimes people just don't want to be part of the group. Parker was upset at times over not being able to buy a cops and robbers toy at the camp store, Carter was bummed about not being pushed high enough in the swing, and Anderson, well, he can be moody with anything. But all in all it was a wonderful trip!
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