You guys….this is my favorite way to wake up:

Seriously, I don’t know why we need houses in the summer.  I could totally live in a campground for the whole season!  And Holland Lake is where we landed this weekend.  We had a great fire last night, I made the two best roasted marshmellows I have ever had and we fell into our sleeping bags around 11.

After a breakfast of PopTarts for me and Aaron and a sausage over the fire for John (I really was not joking about dishes while camping!) we packed up the backpack for a hike up to Holland Falls.  This hike is fairly easy being very short even though you gain some vertical feet.  Here we are:

And here is the view from the trail looking down at Holland Lake:

Beautiful, I mean stupid beautiful, right?.  Sometimes I can’t believe I get to live here.  And right now especially I feel very AWARE of my circumstances.  I feel like I have had my head down plowing the same row for so long, my eyes hurt for the vividness I am finding now.

Once we got back down to the campground we spent the afternoon with our butts in the clear water of the lake:

Then built the evening campfire:

And played about a million hands of Uno.  My ten year old asked me if I ever let him win at Uno when he was younger and, being a fairly honest parent, I answered yes.  He was very upset about the whole thing and then made me promise to never let him win again.  So I didn’t.  And he could not understand why he was not winning.  Then he actually said, “I used to win at Uno all the time”.  You could watch the understanding work its way into his brain as he figured out why he used to be so “good” at Uno.  So last year we learned the truth about Santa and this year the truth about Uno.  Man oh man, it sucks growing up!

Anyhoo, I am tucked tightly into my sleeping bag and scribbling away by the light of my headlamp.  Good night all, smile and breathe and we will talk again tomorrow xxoo