Our fourth camping trip this year was spent with a group of families who have adopted locally. Cory and I have been very blessed to connect with some amazing families who have been a great support system as we jumped head first into parenting. Many of these families have welcomed children into their homes during these past few years and friendships have flourished between the children (and the parents) while enjoying our play dates, summer camping trips, park days, skating afternoons and winter cabin weekends away.
Last year, as few of the families got together and rented a group site at a local provincial park.
We had a great time and decided to do it again this year. In the end we had close to 60 people, with about 45 of those kids. It is a great low key camping weekend with families visiting and no set schedules of events. The kids spent their days and evenings splashing in the lake, tubing/wake boarding behind the boats, playing on the playground, hiking the local trails, roasting marshmallows, running around with glow sticks, and generally just having a great time.
(Side note: I don't have many photos of my kids without others in them, and I don't like to post those pictures unless I have permission from the parents, so photos are lacking in the cuteness factor!).
The playground where many hours were spent...
Some families went on one of the local trails to check out the Fintry Falls...
We even had our (now) annual communal pot luck dinner of deep fried turkeys and all the side fixin's as we all gathered together to share a meal of thanksgiving! On the following day many more adoptive families joined us in the afternoon for a BBQ lunch, it was quite busy as there was close to 125 people (and several hundred wasps lured in by the smell of food!). I'm sure we must have confused many other campers about how we were all connected! The BBQ was hosted by the Adoptive Families Association of BC - thank you Diana for bringing all the food and hard work organizing the BBQ!
If you live locally and have adopted (or are currently waiting to adopt), keep your eye out for the dates for our next year's AFABC Okanagan family camping trip!
What a great idea! I may have to consider this an idea for our local families here next year!
ReplyDeleteWhat an incredible support system, you guys are SO blessed to have these families!
ReplyDeleteJill
Nothing better than a good ole' game of "kick the can"!
ReplyDeleteSounds like you all had a great time. What a blessing to have such a wonderful support system.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteSounds like you had a blast.Better camping experience than ours! What a great idea.
Mary and Sylvie get more beautiful every day !!! Can't believe you've had Mary almost a year now.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds simply amazing! The camaraderie between all these families is truly beautiful! Where do you all generally get your camping supplies? I'd like to recommend you visit The Sportsman's Guide next time you plan one of these trips. They have pretty much anything you could need for a camping trip generally a good deal less expensively than anywhere else I've had experience with. I figure you all will need a lot of stuff so you might as well get the best deal you can! Good luck, I hope this is at least somewhat useful. Keep it up, you people are doing a wonderful thing.
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