more camping!

Time for me to start posting again!  :-)  A lot has happened since my last post...a road trip to Disneyworld / Legoland / a beautiful beach in southwest FL, holidays, road trip to GA, birthdays, Maggie lost her first 2 teeth, my brother got married, Will's grandfather passed away, another road trip to GA, spring wildflower hikes, just to name a few.  Too many pictures to go back and post!

We went camping again at Merchant's Millpond over Easter weekend with some friends.  This time, we decided to make it a little more challenging by reserving one of the canoe-in campsites.  We had the large group campsite to ourselves and it was relatively peaceful (except for the noise from 6 kids) and quiet (except for the incessant honking of geese on the pond).  We saw tons of wildlife, including a black rat snake at our campsite, salamanders, frogs, and lizards on our hike, birds and turtles while canoeing, a beaver off in the distance in front of our canoe, and a very large alligator (this park is near the northernmost part of their range).

all of the kids (l to r): Maggie, Lilly, Eli, Jacob, Lukas (standing above Jacob), Emma

Will loading all of our gear into our extra boat (we brought it specifically to tow our gear to camp) while our friends Leslie & Chris look on

and away we go!

at the campsite, Lilly and Emma hamming it up for the camera

I spotted the black rat snake behind our tent and Chris (who happens to be a wildlife professor at NC State) caught it so the kids could see it

Chris caught several little salamanders on our hike

and male and female fence lizards

Lukas and the lizard

big kids' turn in front of the camera

we packed in a bunch of hard-boiled eggs to dye

Easter morning egg hunt

canoeing after the Easter egg hunt...Kristina and Javier (Lukas & Emma's parents)

Chris took this picture of the large alligator sunning with some turtles...this was particularly exciting for Kristina (from Germany) and Javier (from Spain) who had never seen an alligator in the wild