Party of Five

We spent last week at a lovely little camp in Ontario, Canada. Ben's family has frequented this camp many times over the years, and our trip this year did not disappoint. My in-laws were there as well -- Ben's parents as well as his brother and family. The kids had a terrific time on the beach with all of Ute's cool water toys, we discovered Noah is a champion fisherman, we went hiking and boating and fishing and sunbathing, played cards and read books and put puzzles together, and were generally off the grid with little to no cell phone and internet access for the week.

Now that is a vacation.

Limberlost Lodge from above

My home for the week, Cottage #3. Mac & Jody and the boys were in the next cabin over, and Ben's parents were just up the hill.

(Above pictures courtesy of Limberlost Lodge)

Chillin' in the water

Ben and Mac on the Hydro-bikes. These things were pretty neat. And, as Mac liked to point out to me throughout the week, virtually impossible to fall off of to the point of requiring stitches.

Sophie became a baseball fan in honor of the Cubs' winning streak.

Ben and I kayaked with the kids to a tiny little beach on the other side of the lake.

Travis constantly searched for treasures.

Beach combing

Happy kids

We wore this one out daily. I would put her down for a nap each day, but she was so excited she kept getting up and out of bed to play around the cabin. I routinely found her collapsed asleep at random places. Here, on the wood floor in front of the stove. Totally normal.

On our last full day, we took the kids for a hiking trip up Rock Candy Mountain. It was about a 1,000-foot trek to the top and took us roughly two hours to go both up and down. A nice hike that the kids could do without too much difficulty, although there was a lot of Sophie-carrying involved.

Excited for the adventure

We're hiking!!

Sophie was a daddy's girl for most of the trip

View from our first stop...not quite at the top yet. We stopped here for goldfish crackers and pb&j.

For some reason the camera got a little swirly at the bottom left corner. Maybe the mountain is haunted.

Here we are at the top.

And now Ben, since he wasn't in the family picture above. We didn't mess with the timer on the camera because Sophie was running around too much and Noah was burying his head in the rocks and it wasn't worth it to me to risk one of them tumbling down the face of the mountain just to get a family photo of the five of us at once.

Naturally, we brought candy to eat at the top of the mountain. Noah had been disappointed that there wasn't candy growing on the mountain. He finally came to the conclusion that candy used to grow there years ago and that's why they named it that way.