The Great Outdoors 2009 Edition

Photos: June 18-20, 2009

After our successful camping experience last year, we decided to make this an annual thing with the Jonas family. We changed locations, though, and went to Prineville Reservoir this year. Excellent choice. Campsite A18 was good to us this year. We had more room, less dirt and a little more distance between us and the bathrooms this time. All good things. We are all ready to make reservations for A18 again next year.

The beautiful grassy area adjacent to A18. So nice.

2009 was the year for everyone to display their camping talents. Let's check them out.

First up is Jace, a joyful 2 year old who displayed such talents as multi-tasking and safety. The boy can play in the lake and eat his popcorn snack at the same time...well, that is until he dropped his snack in the lake. Eew, soggy.

Jace also excels at following Safety rules. It doesn't matter what activity is going on, he's going to be as safe as possible by wearing his helmet. And as a bonus he looks super fashionable.

Next up is McKenzie, age 3 11/12 years. McKenzie showed off her talents of raising the roof...
...and being super-silly.

Jonas, age 4 11/12 years, showed his talent for enjoying S'mores....


...and entertianing the other kids with a magic trick.

Tah-dah!!! So impressive.

All three kids showed their amazing talent of enduring freezing cold water for the sake of fun...

...and the ability to make a double stroller into a triple stroller through sheer imagination.

Now we have Michelle, who has too many talents to list but the top two are:
Making perfect Jiffy Pop on the campfire....

....and bringing enough kid-friendly food to keep the kids (mostly) happy.

Travis showed us his awesome talent of perfectly roasting marshmallows two at a time!! Sweet.

And both guys were talented in the build-a-great-fire-then-spend-the-rest-of-the-night-keeping-the-kids-away-from-it department. They seemed extremely good at this since no one got burned.
Tony's other talent displayed was cleanliness. He was the only one in the Cook family to take a shower all weekend and he excelled at keeping our tent free of dirt. It was so tidy.

This photo is not so much about talent as about weirdness...it begins with the weird look on Jonas' face and ends with the fact that he looks like he's having Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce and Diet Dr. Pepper for breakfast. Hmmm....

Last, but not least, my talents are recording this event for generations to come through photo and witty comments (obviously.) But even better than that, I am supremely talented at coming up with S'mores 2.0 which I'm sure no one else has ever thought of before. And here it is: two perfectly roasted marshmallows on peanut butter slathered graham crackers. De-lightful. Try it. You won't be sorry. {unless you eat more that 3, then you'll be plenty sorry}