Camping with the Campbells

One of the major highlights of our trip was going camping with Christy's family. We went to a lake in Virginia called Smith Mountain Lake. It was one of the most beautiful places to camp that I have ever been to. (For those of you from the west coast: to give you an idea of how beautiful this place was, imagine Lake Powell, but instead of having red rock as a backdrop there is beautiful green forest and foliage everywhere... I guess you'll see a little of it in the pictures.)

The most exciting part of camping was Christy's Brother-in-law Tony's boat. Two of our days were spent riding around taking in the beautiful scenery with the wind in our hair and pulling whoever was up to it behind on the tube.

Here are some great pictures of Christy's sister Taylor and nieces Jossie and Arieanna riding the tube:

Here's some of Christy's sister Jackie and her son Aydan:
(Oh, there are some of Christy in there too.)

Kyle took a few turns too, and Tony let him try getting up on skis again after about 8 years... He ate a lot of water trying to get up slalom, but when he put the second ski on he was able to get up on the first try:
(Oh, and what's a good boating trip without having to take a look at the motor because of problems getting it started )

Another Great thing about Smith Mountain Lake was that they had this awesome beach. I wish we would have taken a picture of what it looked like from far away. It was awesome, and gave us all a fun, safe place to play in the sand and water (there were lifeguards and everything):

(The ironic and scary part about that last comment is that while we were there (luckily not while we were at the beach) there was a kid that actually drowned at this beach... kinda a freak accident... ask us or the Campbells about it if you want to know more)

Gabs loved the water, and most of all, she loved her new life jacket we got her:
(She still swims with it in our pool at our apartment complex and loves it... Mommy loves it too.)

Some of our best time was spent just hanging out at our campsite. It was fun to just sit back and relax and get to know our family a little bit better with no distractions. Some of the favorite campsite places were: the hammock, next to the grill, in Tony's giant chair, and next to the firepit.

Smith Mountain Lake was also great cause there are a ton of places that you can go to ride bikes or take a walk, and it is pretty close to the lake for some good fishing or skipping rocks.

One of the funnest things about this trip was watching Gabs personality come out as she interacted with different people. A surprising place where this personality came through was in our tent. We realized while we were out there that Gabbie does really well around lots of kids as long as she has some breaks in-between when she can just go and play by herself for a little while. When we first got to Grandma Campbell's house we were surprised that she had gone out and bought us a porta-crib (how Grandmas always know exactly what to get you to serve as a lifesaver I will never truly understand, but this porta-crib was definitely just that on this trip) and Gabbie loved playing in it while camping.
Here are some great pictures that we got of her while playing:

We're so glad that we got to go camping with the Campbell and Fesperman families. I don't know that we would have been able to have any better time visiting than we did.

Here are some of Christy's favorite pictures from our Camping trip: