Fairview Lakes Camping!

Last weekend I got my first few days off from work and we went camping with Jeff's family. Jeff's bro-in-law Ty's grandparents own a lot in a cabin community by Fairview Lakes, but they never built on it, even though they had the plans all drawn out. Something to do with a dream about a mudslide and the cabin sliding off the side of the hill...

So we just took tents and did some real hardcore camping! Which we enjoy just as much as cabins. Amy and Tyler let us use their old tent, which is almost twice the size of ours, so our air mattress actually fit this time! For those of you who don't remember our inner-tube like tent from last year, click HERE. I didn't get a picture of it this year, but just know it was bigger and contained no bulging...

On our way up to Fairview we saw some incredible rainbows. I gloated about the one at the Kelly Clarkson concert, but this one trumped that by far. The pictures really just don't do it justice.


How many times in your life can you say you've seen the end of the rainbow? I'm pretty sure this was my first... You could literally see the rainbow in front of the hills and trees, and where the pot of gold should be... we almost got out to look for it...



This is Fairview Lake at the entrance of the community. It was like ten feet higher than last year! Crazy! Such a gorgeous lake.


The first day we were there it was beautiful and sunny, which was so nice after the weeks of constant rain we've had! We did some fishing at the lake, where Jared caught the first fish while trolling in the kayak, and then Ty caught one with Jeff and Tiff netting it. She was pretty dang excited about that.






Jeff and I took our bikes and though we didn't do any trail riding, they were nice to have to ride back and forth to the bathrooms and lake. On one trip Nea didn't jump on the 4-wheelers when they were leaving, but she wanted to go with everyone, and so we discovered this was the easiest way to carry a 3 year old on a bike without a child seat... And she LOVED it.

(And I just realized she looks like she's not happy in this picture... but truly she loved it! She was smiley the rest of the time... dang timing....)
I'm not sure her parents loved it, but we had fun. She's got a way tight little grip too.


For the rest of the sunny day we rode the 4-wheelers around, got sun burned, Jeff's mom and sister cooked muffins and other goodies in her new sun oven...

(way cool)

and we played the dice game of Greed.

(We learned Greed from my Buena Vista cousins when we were in Colorado in March. It was a huge hit with Jeff's family as well.)

We were also entertained watching Tiff and Nea entertain themselves with our sunglasses... a repeat of last year...




Almost everytime someone mentioned riding the 4-wheelers, this scene ensued until whoever mentioned it was ready to take them for a ride...


We rode down with Alex and Jared on the other 4-wheeler and visited this little pond, which had tons of huge frogs. Ok, I don't know if they were huge, we never saw them, but they had deep loud croaks, so I imagined huge ugly frogs the size of my hand or something...


The second night we were there it rained a little, but not enough to even soak the few things we left out, including our camera... luckily. Saturday morning it was clear for a few minutes, enough to take a puffy eyed picture.


Then the big grey clouds came in and dumped on us. Luckily we had most of the tents down and so we just hung out under the pavilion, cuddled in blankets, playing more Greed. When it cleared up for a few minutes we finished packing up, pushed a few cars out of the mud, and were on our way. To keep our vacation from being cut short, we all went back over to Jeff's parents house after showers and ate leftover food and watched 2 movies! It was nice to just hang out and relax with the family.

And despite my nasty swollen sun burn on my shins and feet, we had a blast!!

(2 days old)




Because I can't help noticing all the similaries between this year's trip and last year's, I'm including the pictures for comparison:

Nea's ponytails... Last year this was the first ponytail she'd ever had, this year I used my fatty hair tie for her hair, and happened to take an almost identical picture...


They loved looking in and making faces at themselves in Jeff's super reflective aviator glasses... These ones aren't that identical but sorta, and they were doing the same thing...


Being silly


These just reminded me each other cause she's showing off something in the picture, whether it's flowers or a fish net...


4-wheeling, complete with pant legs pushed up on whichever niece is on Jeff's lap...


Nea LOVES the 4-wheelers


Kayaking