Stuff we did

We decided pretty much at the last minute to not go camping this long holiday weekend:  deciding Tuesday night before leaving on Thursday meant we had already purchased almost everything for the trip and Tom had mostly packed his van.  But Dominik's first cold and Tom and Lukas with cold/asthma events, plus the colder temperatures in the desert than we had expected, made it easy to decide to stay home.

One of Tom's friends gave us this ice cream maker in a ball, and we had planned to make ice cream on the camping trip.  Instead, we made it in our living room.  It was fun and very tasty!  Definitely will do it again:  and it's just the right amount of ice cream for our family, although when the kids get bigger we'll need two or three (or the larger size).

Our special outing on Friday was a trip to a park we'd never visited.  Even with Santa Ana winds (hot and very dry) the kids had a blast on the playgrounds.  Then we walked around a lake and enjoyed the wildlife...egrets, herons, ducks.  Thankfully there weren't any mountain lions that we saw!

Then we had lunch with Seth and Yocelyng...very relaxing and fun in their backyard.  Lukas and Konrad loved painting with Bella, and Natalie loved trying out her 3-wheel scooter...another idea for a birthday present!

And of course we slept a lot more than we would have if we'd gone camping.

So, all in all, we weren't that disappointed to not go camping.  But that was our last camping opportunity of the year, so Dominik's first camping trip won't be until 2011.  Hmmm....where should we go first?