first canoe trip of the summer

After a long, long week, Dave finally had this past Monday and Tuesday off. The previous week had been non-stop, with all-day errands, playgroups, picking strawberries, biking to the Farmers' Market, canning pork and strawberry freezer jam, and the Fourth weekend, during which Dave worked 2 10-hour days and a 9 hour day Sunday. I was completely exhausted and ready for some easy time with my men. We decided we wanted to go canoeing on Monday because that is relaxing.

We made it out the door by 10:00 on Monday and picked up the canoe from our home teacher's house where we store it for the winter.

 Hank had been grouchy all morning and fell asleep shortly after we had the canoe strapped to the car, so we drove slowly so he could get a good nap.We made it to the launch site just before noon and got the canoe all loaded and ready to go before Hank woke up from his nap.

 Jed loves to canoe and was so excited for our first jaunt of the summer.

 All loaded up and ready to go!

 When Hank woke up, he was in a much better mood. He had screamed for an hour before we left about wearing his life jacket, but when we all put on our life jackets and got in the canoe, he was a gem.

 Jed couldn't wait to get in the water, so we let him play around on the boat launch while we got everything loaded up. We took our lunch with us because Dave had a particular campsite picked out for us to eat lunch at. We were planning on making a fire to cook our hamburgers and just lounging around before canoeing back upriver. The current is almost non-existent where we launched, so we figured we would have an easy time.

 We made it to our campsite fairly quickly and got a fire going to cook our burgers. Jed and Hank had a great time poking around the campsite.

 Our trusty canoe. Totally worth the $50 we paid!

 Getting the fire ready for lunch. Jed found a fun little hole next to the fire ring and had a blast poking little rocks down it. Hank/Linus drug his blankie all around the campsite and got the dirt all smoothed out for us.

 Because I am crazy, I gave the boys haircuts on Sunday afternoon. They were both shockingly good and I think they both look incredibly handsome.

 Jed and Hank had so much fun using the rubbery campsite marker for a catapult. They launched about a zillion little rocks into the river. Hank only got whacked in the head once.

 We had hamburgers, grapes, cucumbers, cheese sticks, cheetoes and oatmeal cream pies for lunch. It was delicious. Hank mostly ate cheetoes and dirt. I was raised on oatmeal cream pies as special treats during lake and camping trips, so I thought I'd carry on that tradition. Jed was kind of mystified about how soft the cookies are--he took several bites and then told me "mommy, my cookie is SO wobbly!"

 After lunch the boys had a great time playing in the river. Jed found a bunch of snail shells and was quite pleased with himself.

The wind kept coming up and then dying off, so around 3:30, we decided we should start paddling back, in case it took forever. Dave and I were a little worried, because we had had a couple of gusts that seemed to be about 30 miles an hour. I don't mind paddling upstream, but I was a little worried about what the wind would do to us, since the river is quite wide and deep where we were. We made sure everything was lashed down tight and struck out for the car after a prayer. We only had one really hard section of paddling against the wind, and even that was only about 15 minutes. It took us about 45 minutes to get back to the car--not too bad at all. We had such a fun time! I was very proud of how good the boys were in the canoe, and I am looking forward to several more canoe trips this summer.