5 months in advance

Our family loves to camp. 

Both Tim and I grew up camping with our respecitive families every summer.  My parents liked to try new campgrounds out every year.  There were some amazing places and some real duds.  We travelled throughout Ontario and down into the United States too.  My all time favourite memory of family camping was being in Maryland and camping on Assateague Island.  We camped among wild horses!!  It was very cool and we hope to take our girls there one day.

Tim's family usually camped at Killbear Provincial Park with three or four other families.  They all camped in a row at side-by-side sites facing the beach.  They would set up and not leave for weeks.  Tim would roam the beach and the campground with his friends. 

So now it's five months until July.  Ontario Parks won't let you book earlier than 5 months from your arrival date.  Each year around this time in the winter we start thinking about our summer vacation.  Where will we go?  Which week should we pick?  We love Pinery Provincial Park on Lake Huron and Killbear Provincial park on Georgian Bay.  Tim proposed to me at Killbear so it has sweet memories for us.  We camped at Killbear last summer and it is now our families first choice for campgrounds.

Reserving a campsite isn't for the weak, my friends.  Unless you are a one-tent family and don't care about electiricity.  Fortunately for us we have the use of a trailer every year which requires an electrical site.  I love having a freezer while camping because I bring all of my dinners prepared from home and just heat them up and add some fresh vegetables. 

To many of you this isn't "real" camping.  But being comfortable, dry, and well-fed makes for a great vacation for us and so this is our definition of camping.  Don't knock it till you try it.  :)

Anyways, so you need to be well-prepared to reserve a site.  There aren't that many electrical, large sites at Killbear.  They are hard to get.  I am on the computer early...watching the computer time to change from 6:59:59 to 7:00:00.  And "click"  ..I try to reserve the one available site five months from today...and within 1 second I know that someone else got it ..grrr... and now I need to wait again until tomorrow.

Honestly, I hate this part of camping.  It shouldn't be so hard to reserve a site but I guess there are many many out there that love it just as much as we do.

I'll be back on the ontarioparks.com site bright and early tomorrow morning.

Here's to attempt #2.

A Look Back at 2010

January

Hannah's 8th birthday party at the local nail salon.

February

-I begin my job with Catzy's Creations working one evening per week.

Emily's 4th birthday

March

-I become an Aunt again on March 5th to Paul Marcus Zegers!

-I attend a live conference with Beth Moore as the speaker.

 

 We take the girls to Spring Fling at the Roger's Centre.  Expensive...but a fun winter treat.
 

April

We celebrate Easter at the cottage. The girls participate in a community Easter egg hunt. 10 000 eggs were placed on Wasaga Beach`s YMCA property. We spend the afternoon on the beach. Do you remember how warm it was that weekend?



May

Our first road trip!! We loaded up our Mazda 5 and travelled to Myrtle Beach.

We had the most perfect weather.

June

My garden was coming along...this is one of my peonies. They say another name for the peony is "the Dolly Parton of the Garden".

We started work on "Project Pergola". I say "we" but I really mean "Tim".

July

I took the girls to the cottage for a few days. We celebrated Canada Day at Blue Mountain's The Village.

Tim took the girls on a Father-Daughter camping weekend. Too much candy was consumed and late nights were had by all - the girls loved every minute of the trip.

The pergola was completed to a point that we could go ahead with our 2nd annual "Under the Patio Lanterns" Party. Breathing made us sweat that night!!

August

We had our family camping vacation at Killbear this year All four of us are blurry in the picture...but I wanted you to see the luxury we were afforded for the second year in a row. Check out the 37 foot trailer Tim pulled and we lived in for the week. Many thanks to our friends Dave and Gail Clements.

A rare family portrait.

September
-I continue doing child care for family friends two days per week and working for Catzy's Creations when Emily is in school.

My youngest child heads off to school.

27 women register and attend the Beth Moore simulcast with me. I prepare and make gift bags for each of them.

-Fifty seven women sign up and attend our fall women's bible study!! I had hoped and prayed that at least 6 would come....I was totally blown away and thankful to God for answered prayer beyond my wildest imagination. We journeyed thru the Fruit of the Spirit together.

Alison celebrates her 7th birthday

October

-I rejoin the world of Facebook. I join the world of Twitter.

I try my hand at "picnicking".com.

November

-I launch my blog.

Tim starts playing the ukelele. So do the girls...

December

The girls were given a DSi for Christmas - not sure if they were more surprised than I was!

I have truly enjoyed beginning this blog. I have so many ideas percolating in my mind and often find myself writing a post while doing the dishes or trying to fall asleep. Now if I could only get myself to actually write those posts....:)
 Thank you to everyone who keeps checking back to see if I have added a new post. I love your comments! And many of you have said to me in person things like "I totally laughed out loud when I read that on your blog" or other such niceties.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Have a blessed and happy 2011!!

HELP: I must be quite honest: this post was really difficult to do. Does anyone out there know of a more blog friendly way to post pictures? Each of my pictures posted to the top of the post and then I had to manually drag each down to the correct spot. It took FORever. Maybe blogger isn't the best option for me. I welcome all help. :)

UPDATE:  thank you friend......my problems are no more.