Saturday, July 21, 2007

Awwwww, Trinity Lake!
















My favorite part of the year, every year, is the time I spend at Trinity Lake. We have been going there for almost 30 years. Trinity Lake speaks volumes to me about memories.
Favorite memories:
1. Chris and his "bee traps"
2. All the kids getting together with the Jones', Blairs' and Berry's and planning talent shows and then performing at the amphitheater.
3. Washing children in big bowls of water.
4. Getting up on Sunday mornings while our neighboring campers were sleeping in and getting our kids ready for church. Standing by the campfire to get warm till the last moment, wearing sweats till we got to the church building and smelling like campfire smoke in church.
5. Lugging water for cooking and cleanup to our camp sites at Tannery. We used to tent camp there. Years later we moved to Pinewood and a trailer and modern conveniences. In the early days I took all 5 children and 2 friends took all their kids and we stayed up for a few weeks. We were asked if we ran a preschool once as we were herding kids onto our boats. How did we do that? And those were in the tent days, no running water on our site!!
6. Going to the dump to see the bears.
7. Dancing to "Mr. Lee"
8. Seeing each child learn to ski and more recently, wakeboard.
9. Watching the kids ride round and round on bikes at Tannery.
10. Milkshakes or ice cream cones at Docker's or Miller's. Ice cream cones at Trinity Alps.
11. The kids begging us not to leave them with Ray (he'd make them clean up the camp site!)
12. Hobo pies

The list could go on and on. What memories do you kids remember that I haven't included?

One of the sweetest things now is the memories that my children's children are creating. The first time this summer that we went up with Kelly and Jody, Ammon was over the top excited. He kept pointing out all the things he remembered, even pointing to the clock in the trailer and said, "and their's our time!" Everything up there is "ours" and he loves it.

This weekend we had Kaden, Alexa and Sienna there and Kaden and Alexa kept talking about all the things they remember too. They wanted us to take them to the park, roast marshmallows, go to the pool and couldn't wait to get on the boat. When I told Kaden we had to go back to McKinleyville tonight, he started crying. That's how I feel when I have to leave too!