Journal Writing

I started another writing journal.  This time it's a "camping" journal, to record each camping trip. Of course, I will have to design a home decorated cover for it.  I've even saved our reservation paper that is placed on our post for our site.  One of my daughter's, who is 8 years-old, started journaling on our camping trips also.  She wanted to write after she watched me write.  We carried our journals in our hiking backpack so the kids could record and identify plants.  It's true that you influence your kids just by what they see you doing.

My 18 year-old son, who still has not been able to get hired for his first job ever, started freelance writing recently.  He's more up-to-date on current events, video games, movies and topics such as that, and he is earning money already.  He's had journalism classes, and photo journalism type courses, at his career center school.  He's not new at writing or journalism and it has been a positive influence on him while applying for job positions.  I don't recommend this for kids who have zero experience at writing.  However, if one is interested I suggest joining a free writing group or taking any classes on writing before doing this.  There's more to it than just typing out a story or article.

Camping and Hiking ~ What a way to rejuvenate!

I chose the same camping area for our labor day weekend camping trip.  The plan was to go alone, or with just a few kids, but my husband felt it would "not be safe."  In all honestly, I think he was a bit taken back and maybe jealous, and just wanted to go too. Ha ha ha!

There were more hiking trails that we wanted, or should I say, I wanted to hike.  The scenery was beautiful.  Even though we were a bit too close to private homes, you never knew it on the hikes.  Just gorgeous weather too.

I attempted to help the younger two learn to whistle with a piece of grass, but not one of us could do it.  I think my brother can do it, so we'll see if he can teach us.  The girls however, can whistle quite good in an acorn shell now.  They have even used a pop bottle top to whistle.  They learned a lot on this trip.

I'm not sure if we will camp again before winter, because the nights are getting much cooler here.  A guess if we dressed a bit warmer at night we might be able to.

Once again we cooked all of our meals over the campfire.  We cooked a few different foods like corn on the cob.  I would not have known to soak the corn without reading one of MaryJane Butters books.  The corn turned out delicious.  We also made mini apple pies, and egg, cheese, sausage whole wheat muffin sandwiches over the campfire. We also made pizzas on our campfire using our camper griddle pans.  We can cook just about anything on them.

I also invested in these metal plates and cups, and even utensils.  They fit nicely into our prepared camping tote.  Now we are camping a bit more "green" by eliminating all of our paper/styrofoam plates, cups and plastic eating utensils.  I taught the girls how to wash the dishes by heating water over the fire.

The only problem was coming home.  We came home to find out the septic was backing up.  At around 10:00pm last night, a group of men digging up the yard finally found the septic tank lid.  We are making a map, marking that little booger with something, so we can find it again.  That was a long day!  Today they will come and empty it for us.  It's been 2 days and 1 night without toilets, and I can hear all of the kids (and my husband) say to me "you always wanted to live like a pioneer!"  Ha ha ha ha!  In 10 years we will be laughing and joking about this.