Camping with Cousins

This weekend we had the opportunity to go camping with my cousins and their children.
It was so much fun and my kids love to play with their second cousins. My cousin Spring set it up with her Dad and his wife and invited us along too. We ended up going to Mt. Saint Helen's. We went to the Ape Caves where we went last year. The kids loved it again as always.

We then went back to camp and had a smoked salmon tasting adventure. My cousin's Dad smoked a whole bunch of salmon a lot of different ways. We were able to try 8 different kinds and give them our best scores ranging from 1 to 10. I decided I am not that good at this I ended up with like 5 8's and a couple of 4's. After they were all tried numbers 8 and 5 won out. So next time Robert can make a lot of the one that was liked the best. It was all pretty yummy! Thanks Robert.(Uncle Butch)

My Cousins who we camped with were Spring and Harmony they are sisters. They all live in Oregon. Harmony has 2 kids one a month older then Miley and One 10 days younger then Belle. They all got along so well. They played and made forts around our tents. They made a sling shot out of a tree. The funny part was they went around finding cool rocks and then was selling them to us all for a quarter each. It was creative and we are all suckers. I think they each ended up with about a dollar. Belle and Cameron found a rock that broke in half so they each took a half home with them. They called it their friendship rock. It was so cute.

Spring is my favorite cousin we are about a year apart but, we were in the same grade. We were pretty much together all the time when we were together. It was hard since I lived here and she lived in Ashland, Oregon. So we only saw each other about 1 to 2 times a year. So being able to see each other 2 times in one month has been great. The best thing now is she has her little Sailor. She is so cute and we hope that Lilly and Sailor will be just as close.

Spring, Harmony, Dan and kids left in the afternoon to go home. We decided to drive up the mountain and see spirit lake. It was so cool to see the destruction of what a volcano can do in a matter of minutes. They still had tress standing burnt but you can now see the new growth and it is fabulous. We drove up to windy ridge and climbed the stairs to the top. It was windy but really nice. Robert and Emiko went too. It was neat we would stop and some places and they would soon be there too. It was a fun day!!