This weekend we road tripped to Lake Cheney for a Saturday wedding of my cousin, Jake. Another cousin (and mom of 6), Angela managed to borrow an extra camper for us to stay at the lake while we were there. For the second year in a row, we joined them and a handful of their friends for a Memorial Day lake camp out.
There were breakfasts for 30+ people each morning of fresh farm sausage and bacon, "real" eggs and all kinds of other yumminess wrapped up in burritos. These folks are pros. They spend every other weekend of the summer there with their campers, so they have a tried and true system. They have propane tanks hooked up to a burner which heats a huge wok pan. With two of these going, they cook 48 eggs and bacon in no time. Aaamazing.
With plenty of dirt, all kinds of digging toys and a little creek nearby with crawdads, the kids were in heaven. Then came the sticky popsicles, and later the s'mores - and you'll believe it when I tell you we went through all our clothes in no time flat. I had to borrow some detergent from my grandma and do some good oldfashioned sink-clothes washing.
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| Minnow Catching |
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| Just helpin out a brother with his marshmallow hands |
The wedding was beautiful and so fun. I saw about half of my 50-60 extended family members there. When you have 30 cousins, and then about half of them get married and have a few kids each- it gets really interesting when everyone gathers together. By the second day there, Sophia thought every kid at our campground was a family member (which they weren't). They were blown away with all their second cousin playmates! Justin and Elizabeth came up from TX too!
We also were able to visit with my grandma. She talked a bit about her childhood in pre-war Holland and her great-grandparents (who would have been born in the 1800's) so that was a treat! I love going to Kansas because of the sense of history and of family that goes with it. Not that everything is bliss (like every extended family, I think) but just that we're part of something bigger.
While at grandma's the kids got to go check out the chicken coop and collect one brown egg a piece. You wouldn't believe how protective there were of those eggs - which we eventually cooked - to much critical acclaim. There were dogs, cats, a turkey, baby quail, chickens, roosters, and cows out the pasture. The kids were in heaven.
Upon finally getting home and sitting down to dinner, Sophia declared. "I'm glad I'm not in another family because then I wouldn't have as much fun."
