50th celebration and camping!

My mom grew up in Indiana, along with five siblings. Three sets of those siblings were wed in the same year, and thus all were celebrating their 50th this year and decided to do so with a get together back where their seeds were planted. All but one of mom's sibs and their families came, so it was a great turn out and opportunity for them to re-meet Brock as a person and Alice as a cuteness.

 Brock impressed the fam with his engineering of his sneaky sipper. 

 Luckily, we had the room essentially to ourselves.

 Here is the whole gang! 

 And some cake that I drooled over and put in a to-go for the following day (our diet "off" day). Brock said he didn't like chocolate! But Alice was getting and eating cake from all angles.

Not to waste one of our few weekends free, we made the anniversary brunch in Indiana into a camping trip! Any I had to add in a vintage market along the way!

 Highlight for Brock was cracking open a geode (what could be more vintage than an old rock?). We were going to go with the smaller $5 geode, but they didn't have crystals inside, so we doubled our money for sparkles. A wise decision.

 Beautiful!

 Alice loved the great outdoors, especially Brock's chair. In her favor, he was busy helping daddy set up the tent.

 Brock is helping with his many comments... even if he is not technically touching any part of the tent.

 Our giant tent is awesome and there is room for a full and twin size air mattress and a pack and play!!

Here's a video of some family fun in the tent. 

 Camp treats (awesome discovery of biscuits already covered in chocolate for s'mores). There were plain graham crackers as well and plain chocolate as well. As far as being prepared, a "s'mores" badge would have been the only one I would have theoretically earned in Girl Scouts.

 We registered for metal camp roasting prongs for our wedding oh so long ago without a real understanding or appreciation for the good old fashioned skewers carved from a stick. Here we are sharing our hard learned lesson with Brock. 

 Matt's patience with roasting mellows is paralleled only by his dislike of their taste. I think he still managed to choke one down...

 as long as it was sprinkled with spicy Tony's. YEch.

 

The night went ok. A little low on stars for our liking, but oh well. And it did get a bit cold, and Alice did wake up, but she snugged with us and all was well. Brock only woke up once to tell Alice to be quiet.

 The next morning we went for a walk on one of the campgrounds trails. It led us to the dock and a lovely pond of lilies. Alice is too busy dreaming of chest hair to notice.

Super fun trip and I so wish we had a chance to go camping again this summer, but since it's almost October... sigh.