Camping in Missouri

We're going camping!  Its Memorial day weekend, a great weekend for camping.  I had started thinking of planning a camping trip for this weekend a month or so ago.  I wanted to take mom and KG to Lamberts in Missouri so I was looking into camping spots in that direction when I came across camping on the Current River.  The current river is a spring fed, almost crystal clear river.  I am not much for water I can't see into, but this sounded really nice and fun!  So here we come Van Buren, Missouri and the Crystal River.

We made reservations at the Jellystone campground.  There were many benefits to this campground, they had a pool and water play area, they have planned activities throughout the weekend for kids and families and we could get a camping spot right on the river.

The kids were ready to jump in, they weren't to surprised by the chilly temperatures.  It was chilly to me!

The location is beautiful!  Lots of people are enjoying the weekend and floating on the river.

The kids enjoyed playing water guns with grandpa!

One of the activities we decided to participate in was tie dying t-shirts.  We paid for the shirts but they provided and did the rest.

This is Tylers t-shirt.

Tanners shirt.

Tapanga's shirt.

The theme for this weekend was focused around the Indy 500.  We also made license plates. 

Of course, whats camping with out a fire and marshmallows.  On Saturday, mom and Thomas cooked hamburgers and hotdogs on the fire and s'mores for dessert! Yummy

Tapanga was making some of the cutest poses for pictures!

The plan for Sunday was to float down the river.  We decided to take the short float which could take at least 4 hours.  Our plan was to float down the river starting at Riverraft.  Along the way we can stop at sand bars, our campsite and any interesting spots.  We decided to rent a big raft and three smaller floats that we would tie to the bigger raft.  We packed a cooler of drinks and a bag of snacks to take along.

There are lots of pictures from our journey down the river....sorry...but many cute shots of the kids.

I bought a new camera for this trip....I hadn't realized how fancy the waterproof cameras had gotten.  But I bought a waterproof digital camera that is water, shock, and dust proof!  I played around with it and took shots of the kids swimming around.

After swimming and floating the campsite hosted their own Indy 500 race.  The kids made race cars out of boxes and raced around the track. 

Each participant of the race got a free slushy!  A nice cold treat on this hot day.

The campsite also did a hayride.  Tyler didn't want to ride but the other two did.  We had a special rider join us...Yogi Bear!

Before heading out of the area I wanted to go check out one of the natural spots in the area, Big Spring.  This large spring is one of the biggest around and comes out of the base of a cliff.  It averages 13,000L of water a second!  On the placard by the spring it said it could fill the baseball stadium in St. Louis in 33 hours!  Wow, that's a lot of water.

After heading out we went toward Sikeston and Lamberts where we enjoyed a great lunch!  I think mom and KG had a pretty good weekend, it seems KG is looking for a bigger tent for next time.  What a nice weekend we had!

Its Summer Time!

This was the last week of school and we are ready for summertime!  Our calendar is filling up quick, so when Liz asked about meeting up and going to the zoo this seemed like the best week for it.  Monday was the last full day.  Tuesday was the half day.  Wednesday was my last day (work took us to Outback, yummy!).  Thursday starts our summertime!

We decided on going to the zoo on Friday, but Liz lives in Paducah which is an hour and half from me, plus the next hour to Nashville.  I got the idea to spend the night in Nashville, Opryland Hotel has specials for Tennessee residents on Thursdays so Liz headed to our house Thursday afternoon where we then headed to Nashville.

After getting to Nashville we checked into the hotel and walked over to the mall. Marijka wanted to eat at Rainforest Cafe and my kids had no objections...they were all very excited about this.

After dinner the kids were very anxious to get to the pool.  Getting to the pool were were pleasantly surprised by the pool party going on.  The Madagascar characters were their to dance with and then afterwards the kids got to watch Shrek, Forever After while swimming!

The kids swam till 10 pm and were still wound up when we got back to the room so after getting ready for bed we walked around the hotel for a bit.  Liz decided to set an alarm clock, because we had to be at the zoo by 9.  Good thing she did, the kids slept in!  My kids do not normally do that so when the alarm went off and the kids were still asleep I was shocked.

 

We were meeting our cousins Messina and her children and Brooke and her children at the zoo.  Messina got stuck in traffic and was an hour late, while we waited the kids visited the monkeys and the playground, which they loved of course!  It was actually a good thing we visited the playground early, because it got hot very quick!

After meeting up with Messina and Brooke we headed to the Dino Trek, this was an exhibit that I had been wanting to see and I knew the kids would love.  It is only at the zoo till July so we had to see it on this visit since I don't know when we will be back!

This is a picture of all the kids...Messina has two Isabella and Carter, Brooke has two, Scarlett and William, Liz has one Marijka and of course my three!

 Sometimes, when you have four groups of people it makes it hard to do activities like these because everyone wants to do something different or no one can make a decision.  I did decide to buy a season pass, we just need to come back once and it will be paid for, that and Tanner was disappointed because we didn't get to see the elephants it was just to hot!  All in all, a pretty good day at the zoo! And a great visit with Liz and Marijka!