Deschutes Days 1-3

 Well, we had an amazing family rafting trip this year, The last two times I've gone I was pregnant and I missed two years when I had a small baby. This year my mom and Don were willing to take on Miles for a whole week so we could both go and take Charlie for his very first rafting trip! We are so grateful, because we all had so much fun and it was an amazing experience.

We finished up our packing Sunday morning then went over to Uncle Jay's house where nearly everything had already been packed up. It wasn't long before we jumped in the cars and left.

(Also, the majority of these photos are from my Sister-in-law who is an excellent photographer and has a water resistant camera :) We took a couple with our phones but that was about it)

We ended up in the 15 passenger van.

We got to camp before dark so we were able to set up camp and put some boats together.
Here is Charlie trying on Spencer's old life jacket...he ended up wearing the new one we bought him though.


There were little spurts of rain but we set up our tent and slept well. The next morning we cleaned up camp and loaded up the boats. Charlie was so excited to get on the boat so he "helped" by squirting people with a squirt gun while constantly singing row row row your boat.  





It was so exciting for Max to share this rafting tradition with his first born son because it won't be long before Charlie is rowing his own boat down the river. Max was able to give Charlie his first rowing lesson.

Brayden stayed on our boat for awhile...which he deemed as the Party Boat!

When we got to camp there were people in our camp that were leaving the following morning so we just wedged into the side of the camp for the night. It seemed like everyone was tired so they napped. 

Max tried to get Charlie to nap in Lisa's hammock but he was just too wiggly. 

 

The afternoon was filled with some water play! Ok, CHarlie and I were wimps but Max and August and Brayden jumped in the cold water.

Then games and dinner.

 We put Charlie to bed somewhat early because he was grumpy and tired. Apparently Max and I were tired too because we just fell asleep as well.

The next morning we woke up and Charlie started playing with all the cool toys August brought....

Next time we'll have to bring our own toys so maybe August will be more excited about sharing. Thanks August for sharing as much as you did...it really made Charlie happy and you have the coolest toys!

IN the morning we were still waiting for the other campers to leave before moving the kitchen and starting breakfast so we decided to take Charlie on a walk to the train tracks to leave some coins on the tracks. 

It was a fun science lesson. 

It was cute to hear Max constantly teaching Charlie little lessons then hearing Charlie repeat it on his own...for example, Max has showing him that it is easier to walk sideways when going down steep hills. Minutes later Charlie was walking down a steep hill and telling himself that he needed to walk sideways so he didn't fall down. The perfect outdoor school!

And I was fascinated by all these colorful rocks. 

Back at camp we had breakfast and the big boys had found a big snake that everyone got to pet.

Charlie also found some bubble wrap so he was pretty excited about that!

August also went to the tracks to leave some coins and Lisa took this great photo.

 And this is our underwear tree.. Charlie always somehow managed to get wet in the river, good thing we were in a desert, they all dried pretty fast. 

Once we heard the train we got really excited, we ran to wake up Max who was sleeping in the hammock.

These were Lisa and August coins.

When we got to the train track another train was coming so we got to watch a long train go by up close. Charlie thought it was pretty great...and loud!

We only found 2 of our coins and one of them wasn't squished. 

After our walk to and from the train tracks we decided it was so blasted hot that we needed to get back in the river. For as hot as the weather was...that water was still so cold.  

Charlie is still super timid in the water, even with a life jacket on...Max tried to get him excited about riding the floaty.

Spencer kept pulling snakes out of everywhere...made us rethink our decision to swim!

Dinnertime!

A crawdad that August played with for days!

Lisa did some henna tatoos on the boys. Here is August's dinosaur. Charlie got a dinosaur on his had which I forgot to take a picture of, he loved it though and the next morning he said his dinosaur made him happy while he slept.

And it was still hot after dinner so we ended up back in the river.

Sometimes he just liked to wear his helmet. 

When the sun went behind the mountains we started prepping for our sand bowling tournement, well, Brayden had been preparing for hours by creating the teams and brackets and digging the holes and creating the batons. Good Work Brayden!
It seemed that Max created some sort of ritual with August...

I don't know if August will want to repeat this ritual.

Annette and Jay warming up for the competition

I think we went first against Jenna and Nui...we didn't do so well so we were out of the competition pretty quick.

In the meantime, Charlie and August were playing with and launching a cow skull.

They are cute cousins

And the champions were Jordan and Spencer!

And that concludes the first couple of days of our rafting trip...stay tuned for the last couple of days.