In Camp Chadwick part 2, we decided to....
...play more Crossnet (surprise!)
...play with playdough (actual surprise!)
...and dress like this! Originally, we were going to do a team costume contest, but it pretty quickly devolved into the kids coming up with whatever costumes they could. Hence, here is Michael sporting the well known rastafarian-purple-hair-hippie-hulu-dancer costume. He's really ahead of his time. His kids are going to love it.
And here I am, with a hulk fist. And that's all I have to say about that.
Rachel and Sarah look like they are on a woodstock album cover.
Sarah in all her glory.
Taryn sporting the sleeve tattoos.
Rachel with a hair identity crisis. Is she Elsa? Is she Anna? No one really knows for sure.
Gracie being the coolest cat around.
After Amber dressed up, she decided it was high time she took Rachel hostage.
I haven't known many trash bag wearing little girls, but every single one I have known has turned into a kidnapper.
After paying an exorbitant sum, Amber finally agreed to not plunge Rachel's head.
Either Emily came to the rescue, or this situation just got worse.
I bet if she just carried that plunger around, she could get into a lot of places without paying.
Abby, Evie, and Raquel (ole!)
Preview of Rachel as a teenager.
Punk gangs of Utah invading Wyoming.
Rachelio the magnificient!
Even our long lost cousin Dave came to visit.
Spider-Man pondering his next move.
Sympathy for the Devil: the Rachel cover.
Emily really knows how to wear her tablecloths. You can tell this isn't her first time doing this dance.
After Halloween, the kids returned to arts and crafts time.
But they were soon interrupted by the "unbirthday party" and the Chadwick traditional piñata. This year, it took the form of Clifford the big red dinosaur.
Rachel really tried, but didn't do much to it I think.
Michael, on the other hand...
...did some serious damage. Poor Cliff never saw it coming, but he is giving Michael the stink eye here, so maybe he did.
Not pictured: we made "Thanksgiving dinner" by throwing chicken, potatoes, stuffing, and cranberries into the crockpot in a variation on our cranberry chicken recipe. It was delicious.
Christmas was a double header. For the kids, they had a gift exchange. They made, found, bought, stole, and dove in the dumpster for presents for each other. We started with the youngest and went to the oldest. Here Evie is opening up her present: a box!
And inside the box was a squishmallow that Gabe made for her. She clearly had no interest in it, what a disaster.
She even attacked Gabe after. (Hopefully it's painfully obvious that she loved it and was giving him a huge hug. If you didn't catch that, I'm sorry, you probably missed most of the jokes in all of the posts I've done as well.)
Gabe got a "Will it float?" science experiments kit from Henry.
And the post-present hug. Also pictured: Gracie working hard to ignore people.
Rachel opened hers and got...
...a bath bomb kit. She loves making and smelling good things, so it was perfect.
Evie really knocked it out of the park.
Michael made Sarah a bracelet and also bought her a science kit.
When you're too cool for hugs, high fives work too.
Even though Heather wasn't there, she still gave a gift to Michael of a football.
Not pictured: Michael hugging Heather, because she wasn't there, and it didn't happen.
I love hugs. Hugs all around!
She just clearly hates it.
Hate hate hate.
(Devri: The gift exchange was probably the big highlight for me. I loved watching each kid giving their presents. They were SO excited to give their special gift, and it was so sweet to see all the hugs exchanged, especially between the older ones and younger ones. We used to do a cousin gift exchange when we were children, and it was fun to see the kids doing the same thing. We're seriously thinking of making it a tradition. It was also really nice to do it during the summer instead of adding one more thing to Christmas time.)
Abby had a little too much fun opening presents. Without Grandpa there, someone had to take care of letting babies fall asleep on them.
Thomas surprised the kids the last day and came up for the night. We haven't had him at a family thing for a very long time, so it was really great to have him there.
I believe Abby got the Godfather horse on a stick.
After Sarah taught her how to properly mount and dismount, she was ready to go.
Thomas brought up some BB guns and the older boys had a great time firing them off against some targets. Since we had been finished with Christmas for at least several hours by that point, we felt that the eyes would not, in fact, be shot out, and it was safe to let them go.
We also finally started a fire on the last night. Somehow this was the only fire we started I believe. You'd think with all of the pyros around this thing would have been going constantly like in Lord of the Flies.
For the adult Christmas activity (there's just no good way of saying that, I'm sorry), we made ornaments from tiny Lincoln log kits. Devri found these somewhere and thought they would make a great ornament, and they certainly do after you get it put together. Putting it together, however, proved to be more difficult than one might think. Mini Lincoln logs require hot glue to stay together, which means a lot of burned normal-sized fingers. Rachel helped me put together the model (done before this trip), but she was already in bed by the time we did this up there. We really could have used her help. However, we finally got them all put together and most people were excited about them even if they hated putting them together.
A moment of silence for the gatorade bottles lost in the creek. Or we found one and we're all watching someone pull it out. Or both of those things. Probably both.
On July 16th, we started saying our goodbyes. First Devri said goodbye to McCallan.
Then Chelsea said goodbye to her family.
Then it turned into bigger selfies. Not pictured: Amber's eyes, Elijah's body, and most of Aaron.
Much better, nice job guys.
Evie, Elijah, Gabe, and Abby disguised as a pole.
Sista's and Abby not-so-disguised as a pole.
To a little kid, there is nothing quite like the accomplishment of being able to pick up your cousin. Here's attempt #423 by Evie trying to pick up Gabe.
The entire family (minus Heather, who was there in spirit, probably; I never saw her myself).
It was a great 4 days with the Chadwick clan. We laughed, we cried, we missed Kirk #1 and Kirk #2 (he was quite good at literally playing both teams in Catchphrase), and most important of all, we played a lot of Crossnet. Seriously, who knew that was going to be so popular at this thing? No one saw that coming.
In all, we were really happy with this spot in Bedford. It hit the 3 B's desired by most Chadwicks: budget, bathrooms, and barren of people. Everyone was happy with the spot, even those that don't actually like camping (e.g. me). In fact, we already booked it for next year.
No comments:
Post a Comment