The Father and Sons Campout 2016

This campout is one of McKay's favorite things.  He is usually asking about the next time we are going to go to Father and Sons as soon as we are driving away.  He loves it, and so do I.

This year was a little different though.  Our stake decided to not do a campout, but rather have a dinner and program at a park behind our church!  In fact, it was not announced that this was to be the case until 2 weeks before the 'campout'.  I was surprised and disappointed, and knew it would break McKay's heart.  So I decided to do our own thing.  And then I decided to invite others. :)  There ended up being 3 other fathers with their sons who came along, and we had a great time.

Avonlea really wanted to come too.

These poor girlies did not want to be left behind. They were determined to go with the boys. Lele is all set with her boots on.

McKay has been really needing a pocket knife. He has asked many times for one. We want to get him one but feel when he lives in a cooped up area like we do and doesn't have enough appropriate things to carve on that more harm will be done than good. So, we got him a wooden pocket knife to use as a training knife. We gave it to him right before they left for the father and sons.

Looking for fish

We went to Battleground Lake State Park.  It is a great little place; a small lake, swimming area, hiking trail all the way around the lake, a playground and secluded camp sites.

It was starting to get dark, but McKay and I decided to take a look around and explore.

Saturday morning ended up being wet.  Very wet.  We went down to the lake and fished with our good friends the Claus's for a minute, but then decided to hike around the lake, rain and all.

McKay was fascinated with this tree.  There was about 30 feet of this tree that was completely hollowed out and blackened from fire.

McKay really wanted to take a picture by himself :)

This is the opposite end of the lake from the fishing dock (upper left of picture)

McKay pretended that this was a monster that we had to kill.  Once the deed was done, he needed to have his picture taken with the fallen beast.

Rain or no rain, this boy was determined to go swimming.  So after we hiked around the lake we packed up camp (the others had already left) and then headed back to the lake for a swim!