Gratitude Sunday

These past two weekends have been spent camping with my extended family and Fridays have consisted of madly trying to pack everything so I've been a bit lacking in the Gratitude Friday area.
They were two wonderful weekends of enjoying nature, being away from life, and appreciating one another. We expressed several times to each other how special it is that we have are close enough as an extended family to be able to do things like that together without tearing each others hair out or rewriting our wills at the end.
The first weekend was a long one here in Canada so we drove for four hours to a place called Wasa Lake. It was so hot that we were either melting in the shade while Sierra napped or in the lake trying to keep our blood from boiling. (Okay it was only like 35 C which is around 95 F and I know it gets much hotter for some of you but those temperatures are less common around here so we're not used to them) Sierra had the most fun of all, you would think that the beach was Disneyland!

She had sand in ever possible crack and once she realized that the water wasn't so scary had a whale of time in her little 'boat.'

On the Saturday evening we were hit with a wicked thunderstorm, the rain was so loud that Trevor and I had to yell at each other in our tent in order to be heard. My dad tried explaining to a scared Sierra that the thunder was the clouds laughing - they were gaffawing so hard the ground shook! We unfortunately discovered that our tent does not appreciate torrential down pours and subsequently gave up on repelling the water in certain places. We didn't get wet or anything thankfully and the next day returned to sunny, hot, bliss.
We returned home on Monday to a night of thunderstorms. Most people didn't sleep between 2 and 3 am and we had an awesome amount of rain. Than it rained off and on for most of the week plunging the temperature down to the point where I turned on our furnace and baked bread one day! I nearly cursed.
This past weekend we only drove an hour and a half to a mountain lake where we enjoyed much milder temperatures than the pervious weekend but a vast improvement from the week. At night I wore sweats, socks, a long sleeved shirt, and a hoodie in my sleeping bag with another blanket on top. It dropped down to 5 C at night. I'm pretty sure my nose froze. The day time was nice and sunny and warm whith some circling and roaming thunderclouds Saturday afternoon but all they did was make noise, no rain. Of course this time we had covered our tent with a tarp! Sierra's highlight here was the park. Kid's are so easy to please!
We arrived home early this afternoon and celebrated my mom's birthday this eveninga nd now back to work and reality tomorrow. Thus ends what we get this year for summer vacation. It wasn't long but it was great!