Crawdaddin'

I think it was last year that we had two families with us on our annual crawdad fishing trip; our Christmas-tree-hunting friends as well as my brother's wife and kids, visiting from Seattle.  We had a quieter year this year! No visiting cousins plus the Burnetts were taking a massive trip in Taiwan, so we were all alone for our little getaway.

I'm not going to lie. I didn't really want to go. Summer was at its peak of heat, and getting ready for a camping trip is just so arduous. So much to gather, such a pain to get it all packed. I was so sweaty and grumpy by the end of the preparations that I'm pretty sure my husband was ready to just pitch me out of the car. Happily he had faith in me, and I'm so glad. When we arrived at Strawberry Reservoir it was just deliciously wonderful up there. I was so glad we were just our own little family. The sky was amazing. The campfire felt good. It was cool and breezy and just beautiful. We kept the food simple - hotdogs over the fire for dinner and cold cereal for breakfast. I was so happy I went.

I'm not going to say it was a great night of sleep - I know it's partly due to the fact that I'm old and creaky and my bones don't care for sleeping on the ground, no matter how many pads you pile under me. But it's also partly due to the fact that we picked a camp site way too close to the water where everyone else wanted to camp as well. It was noisy. Campfire parties until 1:00 in the morning. The next morning I went for a walk and found some totally empty camping areas up on the hill where we will be camping next year. I just agreed to do this again next year, did you catch that? Well despite the rough night, the morning was gorgeous and we enjoyed quite a sunset before heading off to catch those crawdads.

We posted this picture on instagram and when Peter's daughter Iva saw it she asked, "How is he doing that, is he MAGIC?" 

Emma and I had to leave early because violin! Her lessons are on Saturday mornings and we just didn't want to miss it. I think The Becky was about to head out of town and we did not want to miss it. So she and I took off, headed back down to the raging hot valley, had a great lesson, and went home to clean up and get ready for friends to come eat crawdads. P.S. didn't Troy grow a gnarly beard over the summer???

Clearly my little boyfriend Thomas was the star of the show - can you blame us? Look at that cutie!!

Great crawdad year, especially because I so loved getting up to the reservoir with the family and because I didn't eat a single one. I hate those little lake bugs. Very glad my kids love them.