Dinosaur Valley State Park Camping trip

It's been a week since we went camping and I have wanted to post something about it but I haven't found time and today is a day off at my job so here it come with lots of pictures. Let me start by saying that we normally take my parents truck camping so we can pack pretty much everything we want, this time we took the 4 runner so we had to condense. In the process things got left behind...I brought all my camera stuff but left the battery in the bag I condensed down at my parents! Oops again:) My mom's camera is acting up so some pictures are grainy but they captured the moments we wanted to capture.

This was only Troy's second weekend at his new job so he had to stay back home while we had all the fun. We left Saturday morning and the kids passed out in the car so we figured we just stop for lunch once we got into the town of Glen Rose which turned out to be a great idea. The kids started to wake up right as we were driving into town and Asher saw lots of motorcycles because I guess there was some rally down there that morning. We drove into the downtown district and were looking for food so I ran into a little place called pie peddlers and asked if they served food also, they didn't but recommended us to a sweet little place The Green Pickle but assured me their pies were better so I vowed to come back to them to test them on their word:)We sat on the patio out back and it was the perfect place for the kids to play while we had some good eats!! After eating we found our way to Dinosaur Valley State Park and found our spot we'd reserved. It was at the back right up against the woods and was a gorgeous spot fully covered in trees. Now that we had a good spot secured we headed back to town to shop a bit and enjoy some homemade pie. The town is such a sweet place and I wish some more of the antique shops were open but we had fun and barely made it to the pie place before they closed. One of the women came out on the porch with us and chatted with us as we ate and I found out that her daughter with kids all the same ages as mine (and all A names also:) just moved into the neighborhood across the street from us in Frisco so we exchanged some info and I hope to see if I can meet her daughter since she hasn't met anyone yet since moving here. We then went back to the park and set up camp and started on our dinner. The sun was going down and we still had lots of things we had to do with the kids b/c if we didn't Azlyn would let us know, haha. She helped me cut up potatoes and onions for the stew and stir it all up in the dutch oven and while waiting for it to cook we had fun playing and reading books in the tent. The kids were so giddy it was hilarious. Asher also was given a new sleeping bag before the trip with the Cars Movie on it so that was super exciting for him and he kept hiding in it and Azlyn would cover him up in it and they would just die laughing. The stew was finally done and DELICIOUS! This a new regular for us while camping I think! After that it was time for s'mores and hitting the sleeping bags...a successful night and a very late one at that.

Sleeping that night was a bit rough. I kept hearing the squishing of the blown up beds underneath the sleeping bags and being pregnant and having to pee all night doesn't help either! After sleeping maybe 7 hours the kids decided it was time to wake up and so up we were, starting breakfast and our specialty dutch oven donuts. I remember these donuts from every camping trip we ever did as kids and it is so much fun. We had enough to share with the neighboring camp and we found out they lived only about 5 minuted from my parents. The kids were close in age to Azlyn and Asher so they had fun all morning playing with them in the woods. We still had to go see the dinosaur tracks so we popped some popcorn over the fire for a snack to take and off we went. We had to cross some water to get the tracks and it was freezing but you would have never known that by the amount of time the kids spent playing in it. We stayed down there a long time just letting them throw rocks into the river. I had brought a swim suit for Azlyn in case it was a sunny day and I could let her play in that, well it was a cloudy chilly day so I said no to the swimsuit...Azlyn didn't care, she laid down straight in the water in her clothes and got soaking wet...lesson learned:) We got changed and went and found some bluebonnets to take some pictures in. This was fun until Asher ventured a bit to close to a cactus at the edge of the flowers and started screaming his head off. Marine to the rescue...we had a full safety kit and I was able to use tweezers to eventually find and get out all the needles. OUCH!! Poor thing was so tired and sad, we went to the store and bought him some ice cream to share and once we'd pulled away to head home he passed out. Sweet boy was exhausted, what a traumatic incident for him! I think he'd forgotten about it once he woke up and hopefully all her did remember was all the fun we had!

Asher wouldn't pay attention during any pictures b/c he kept trying to see motorcycles in the parking area.

These were dinosaur replicas that were used at the 1964 New York World Fair and they brought them to keep at this park

Glen Rose Court House

One of Azlyn many poses on the steps of the court house

Asher randomly crawled under a chair and found a caterpillar that the kids then played with for a long time and Azlyn cried when we had to put it back b/c she really loved it!

Nana and Grampy running down the hill with Asher at a neat park nearby the town square

Azlyn helping set up camp

Helping cook the stew

YUM!!! The stew before it was cooked, I'm telling you, this was SOO good!

The kids decided to crawl on top of Nana while reading books in the tent

Breakfast, got bacon cooking and coffee brewing!

Asher helping Grampy breakdown the camp

Making our dutch over donuts

The kids playing with friends they had met

Dad cooking the popcorn

Dinosaur tracks in the river

Outside another one of the track sites

Hanging out on the river

I should have put a swimsuit on this girl...

Nana and Asher