Strawberry Reservoir, Sept 18-19

This was our last camping trip for the season, and let me tell you, we went out with a bang.  The girls were atrociously behaved and out of control.  We somehow managed to have fun still, but it was mingled with much stress and frustration. 
1.  Emilyn cried off and on ALL NIGHT.  I think we got about two hours of sleep total, one at the beginning of the night and one at the end.  We were doing all we could to settle her down so she wouldn't wake up all the other campers. . . Except
2.  The campers next to us who were part of the problem keeping us up, until I don't know when, very drunk, and talking about positions and such.
3.  Emilyn would not stay at the campsite and kept running away no matter where I put her down.  Her favorite direction was the street.  The highlight was when Matt thought I was watching her and I thought he was watching her and she ran into the street and a car had to stop for her and wait until we noticed.  
4.  Matisyn kept getting mad at us and then running away into the woods.  That's how she shows her frustration with us is throwing whatever she is holding and running away.  That's fine in the house, I actually appreciate it, but not out in the middle of nowhere.
5.  We attempted fishing.  The people around us were catching fish after fish.  At the end of an hour, we had caught nothing, Matisyn was soaked, Matt had lost all his hooks, Matisyn's fishing line was stuck to the bottom of the lake, Emilyn was screeching, and we were putting on a show for the crowd.  I think everyone was happy when we left!  The highlight was Matisyn yelling excitedly that she found a worm. . . it was a snake!
6.  We headed back to camp to cook dinner on Matt's new Camp Chef stove that he got for his birthday.  We tried having one of us cook, and one prepare, but the children were wrecking havoc on the camp.  This was the time when Emilyn ran into the street and Matisyn into the woods.  It was also a chore to keep Emilyn from walking into the fire.   Somehow we managed to get dinner ready, but eating it was just a new battle of chaos. 
7.  Next was campfire time, enjoyable family togetherness around the fire. . . think again.  You will see in Matt's face that it was far from that expectation.  Let's just say it didn't last long, but we tried to make the best of it.
8.  Bedtime came as soon as we could reasonably make it so.  Matt and I sat outside for a bit, hoping they would fall asleep while the tent trailer rocked with their jumping and playing.  When Matt check a bit later he found them wide awake and Matisyn inside Emilyn's play pen playing toys with her.  Eventually they fell asleep while we froze outside.  Emilyn woke up a little bit later because of the crazy, loud, drunk campers next to us.  We were able to settle her down and that's when we got our first hour of sleep.  Luckily I had my ear plugs or I never would have slept through the neighbors.  Then began our all night long battle with Emilyn.  Luckily Matisyn slept through most of Emilyn's noise, although I'm not sure how, and thankfully Matt was much better and more patient with Emilyn.  We somehow made it until morning.
9.  Trying to pack up was kind of like dinner, but with more whining.  So finally we strapped them both in their carseats, closed the doors, and proceeded to pack up.  We had to make it back for church that morning because I was teaching primary, so we didn't have a lot of time.  After we packed up we did manage to stop by the lake again and redeem the trip a little.
10.  The reason Matt wanted to go was because this lake has a bunch of crawdads, a.k.a. crayfish and he wanted to show me how fun they were to catch when Matisyn and him were on the Daddy/Daughter campout.  You tie some bones or meat to the end of a string, and basically they bite it, don't want to let go, and you can pull them up.  It's pretty entertaining actually.  I was happy to throw them back though because I had no intention of eating them.  They are so ugly, they're cute!

The first few minutes were pretty fun down at the lake watching the girls play in the water.

Emilyn wanted to fish too, we really do need two of everything these days.  Below is Matisyn's determined to catch a fish face.  She was really trying hard!  Turns out the hook was just stuck on some weeds or something on the bottom!

Emilyn was so proud to finally have a turn.

This was our happy family fishing picture.  I couldn't get Matisyn to turn around because she was mad about something.  Emilyn was crying because I was holding her back from exploring the edge of the cliff!

 Above is the real scene during most of campfire time.  Below is a reenactment of what it should have been like!

 The girls looking for crawdads, and below is my first catch!  Doesn't he look snuggly!

Don't worry we didn't actually let him pinch her.  She couldn't resist reaching out for the creature though.  So all in all it was a pretty exhausting trip, but now that a couple of weeks have passed, I don't remember it being too bad!  Good thing both our girls are just as precious and adorable as they are unmanageable and stubborn!