Big Basin

March 1st is a big day in our home - Joseph and Caleb's birthday!! We love having them share a birthday. It makes going all out for a birthday celebration twice as fun. This year we started with a camping trip on Friday. We drove about an hour south to Big Basin Redwoods State Park and set up camp amongst the incredible redwoods. The scenery was really spectacular, and I am really hoping to go back this summer so we can camp for two nights and get some hiking in.

The two birthday boys were so good about getting things set up so we could have a comfortable camping experience.

All of the kids were beyond excited to play in - and eventually sleep in - this tent. Literally every 20 minutes for the whole afternoon Caleb was asking us if it was time to go to bed yet.

Our tent is really huge, but looks so teeny next to the huge trees!

Here's Emi standing inside one of the trees right in the middle of our campsite.

The fire was the other really exciting thing about camping. Here they are all enjoying chocolate-chip pumpkin muffins as an appetizer before the fire was ready to cook on.

Elinor and Joseph worked together to get dinner ready for the family. Ellie was so cute, taking one for the team there, standing in the smoke!

I have entitled this picture "sisters demure." It shows Elinor and Emily enjoying some food together. (Dinner was pretty simple - hotdogs, grapes, Doritos, and juice - but SO delicious! Maybe we were all just really hungry!)

This one is called "sisters crazy." You really should click on this one to see it up close. That Elinor.

And here we have "sisters proud." El is just so pleased with herself for pulling a crazy face just in the nick of time for that last shot.

Not convinced? She was really on a roll this trip. I don't think I have a single normal picture of her. This was during our after-dinner walk:

 

 

I'm pretty sure this picture happened after she pulled a face and was laughing about it.

Here they are at the top of a hill that we hiked up.

And climbing on some fallen logs we came across. They really were so big, the kids called it a tree playground.

The weather was great during the day, but it rained all night. Luckily, our tent kept us dry and there was a big enough break in the rain to start another fire for breakfast in the morning.

The last time we went camping was before Elinor was even born, so it's been a while. I decided last year that our family has reached a stage where we can do more stuff like this, so I got Joseph this great big tent for Christmas. It is so nice to have all of the kids old enough to run around and be excited about camping. I am determined to get at least a few more uses out of this tent before the year is out. Let's see how we do!