Boys Will Be Boys

Posts Tagged ‘patrick’

Life since my Colorado trip has been a blur & not in a good way! When it rains it pours as they say!

Patrick was rushed to urgent care this morning & is on meds for sinusitis gone bad…resulting with both inner ear infections & overall crappy feeling. He pretty much spent the weekend in bed, sleeping, weak & exhausted!! It’s rare he’s sick & this is probably the worst I’ve seen.

It seems Braysen might be following as he was sent home early with a fever today too!

Merrick is still fighting with a cough & wheeze lingering from his near pneumonia urgent care scare.

I’m alive ..barely & exhausted! My class this semester is intense, frustrating & overall stressful. My first test was horrible & I am dreading the results! So much going on & trying to stay afloat! Our schedules are full of juggling acts of someone here or there, trying to figure out who drops off, who picks up & where should we be!

Just need to be able to breathe….

Seems like there has been a lot of meds around lately…we will get a break soon right?

The good news is Patrick told me to have the house cleaner over again so I’ll call to get her over soon! I need some relief, we are sinking!!

These are the flowers my funny, yet geeky husband got me for Valentines Day. Thanks to www.thinkgeek.com for providing geeky guys with gift ideas  like this bouquet! Is it sad that 1/2 my friends do not get what this is but my 3 yr. old was explaining what different powers the flowers can give me? House of geeks I tell ya!

Let me just say that had my gift for Patrick arrived in time, it goes well with the geeky theme of this day! Hopefully it gets here tomorrow!!

I do <3 my geeky husband!

– Post From My iPhone

Sometimes I think I could live off in the woods along a river or lake.  Then I realize that I would eventually need to come back into reality and the technology world because the inner geek in me can’t be away from it too long.    We took the boys camping last week and I wasn’t sure any of us wanted to come back to reality.  That meant work for both Patrick and I, daycare for the boys and schedules!  Ugg!  It’s still summer though at least and our weather is somewhat cooperating now.

Back in May my family came out for Memorial Day weekend.  I drove them over to the coast to do some shopping and then we did some scenic driving along the coastal highway.  Well, once we got to Newport, we decided it was time to head home after our very long day.  My dad was on his new phone all mapping out our route.  I thought we should just drive back up the coast and go the way I was familiar with.  He thought we should go this other way inland from Newport.  Well, we took a turn too early and ended up on Hwy. 229.  It got us a bit lost and confused but I figured we’d end up in an ok spot eventually.  The road followed a beautiful river and was tucked back in the coastal mountains.  I told my parents that day, as we are lost and laughing about it, that I would love to camp back there somewhere.

While plotting a camping trip I looked up campgrounds along Hwy 229 and found Moonshine Park in Lincoln County tucked along the Siletz River.  We found a winner of a campground though!  The camp host is incredibly nice, the campground is well maintained and has bathrooms.  They just got showers 2 weeks ago (we forgot quarters so couldn’t use them but we know for next time!).  They have a nice looped road around the campground and a shoulder for kids to bike / people to walk along.  I loved how our site was close enough to the river but far enough that the boys weren’t running to it.  I can’t say enough good things about this place, truly a hidden gem but the host told us it gets full fast now a days so we’ll have to get there early next time too.

**all pictures are thumbnails, click for bigger, sorry for being so tiny, will fix later!**

We left Wed. morning and got there shortly after lunch.  We pulled in and found a nice spot under a big tree.  Can we say Shade is good?   I thought it’d be a lot harder getting camp set up with the boys running wild but they stayed fairly close, trying to help and getting into the camping stuff.  We got the tent up in a nice shady spot and then proceeded to settle in before exploring a bit. It was a very warm afternoon so we got the boys in their swim suits and headed to the river after scoping out a few swim spots.

A typical day camping was like this:
Bugz wake up around 6, get breakfast going and then head off to the fishing spot.  We’d sometimes fish until 9-10, depending on when we got over to it and how long Bugz could last throwing rocks into the river.  We’d head back to the campsite and then get some snacks, change into our swimsuits and head over to the waterfall area for a morning paddle in the boat.  We’d take turns taking the boys out in the boat, paddling them around.   Bugz would start giving us that glazed over tired look in the boat or he’d be on shore turning into monster Bugz, which meant time for us to head back for naptime.

While Bugz was napping Braysen and Patrick would head out for their father-son fishing time.  They went to a different spot at lunch than in the morning that had a better fishing area for Braysen.  It wasn’t a good spot for Merrick and I to go though as it was harder to get into.  When they came back, we’d get some lunch going, hang out a bit and then head back for our afternoon swim.  We went between the waterfall and another swimming hole spot because it kept the boys happy and they each were nice for different reasons.  I like to paddle around the waterfall but the other swimming hole has a nicer gradual slope for the boys to play in and it’s where more of the younger kids that are camping there play also.  Before dinner we’d head to the little rinky dink in the middle of nowhere store for ice and to get the boys out for a drive.  Dinner time and getting a campfire ready for S’mores came and went then it was bedtime, which Merrick fought us on every nite until 9ish, one night 10!! While I was getting Merrick down for bed, Braysen and Patrick would usually go do their nightly fishing run.  Some nights they’d get back and I’d have Bugz asleep so the 3 of us did S’mores, other nights I was still fighting him.    The boys got in a groove and it was a lot of fun, they stopped running so far away and stayed closer to camp, knowing where they could go and what not to do….for the most part! haha

Highlights Reel:

Patrick flipped the little boat going down the rapids the first time he took Braysen.  He told Braysen that if they fell out, to just back float and daddy would get him.  Sure enough, they flipped and Braysen did just that, as he is floating, he asks Patrick, “I’m backfloating daddy, are you going to get me?”  Patrick got scraped up pretty good on his legs from the rocks while getting Braysen and the raft. He lost an oar and his hat though!  Luckily, our neighbors found the oar and I found the hat later that day at the swimming hole.  He got quite the rep. for being the guy that flipped that day.  To his credit, our little raft is not meant for much of anything but floating hehe.  Although, there were people taking inner tubes, blown up air mattresses and random other weird things down the rapids.

Braysen caught 3 fish on his own!! We were all pretty excited for that and if you ask him, he’ll tell you, “I caught 3 fish and the last one was bweeding (bleeding).  We put him back in the water because it makes him feel better.  Poor Fishy.”    Among other funny lines of commentary on his fishing adventures that I can’t remember atm.   We cooked up one of the fish Patrick caught and even Braysen liked the taste of his first pan fried fish.

I learned that you can make all sorts of games out of throwing rocks or playing with rocks after spending hours on the banks of the river with Bugz entertaining him with rocks, shovels, buckets and water.  hehe

We’ll be going back there in August, which can’t come fast enough!  It was so nice to be away from phones, work, TVs, drama and other distractions.  Just good ol’ family time, just like I remember spending with my family camping.  The only thing it was really missing is family and friends with us but maybe someday.

All of the flickr camping pictures can be found here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/mymindslost/sets/72157624355474569/detail/