Camping, Moving and a Big-Girl Bed

Can I just say it has been a crazy couple of weeks! We have been trying to plan a family vacation before the launch of the new campus and we finally got away for a few days. We had contemplated vacationing after moving but decided we would rather relax before the storm! I did some research online and found what sounded to be like a great campground up in Baraboo, WI called Devil's Lake State Park. If you ever need a place to camp in WI, this is the place to go! It was BEAUTIFUL! And this camping trip was full of adventures. One of which being much colder temps then we are used to while camping. One of the locals told me it got down to 39 the first night we were there! Thanks to our dear friends, Misty and Andy, we stayed nice and warm. They let us borrow their super warm sleeping bags and gave us a great tip: put boiling water in your Nalgene bottle then put it in your bed to warm it up! Worked great and Mike and I actually slept with our bottles a couple of nights. But even with the chillier temps, a few days of rain and the crazy squirrels in the night, we had a great time just being away and being a family. Oh and Sarai did great! She loves being outside so camping is right up her ally. And she thought it was pretty cool to sleep in a tent :-) Here are some of the pics from our trip:

Family pic from our hike to the Natural Bridge

Snuggle time with daddy around the campfire

Eating roasted marshmallows!

Just a fun pic while on one of our hikes

Family pic from our hike to Devil's Doorway. This was a killer hike but the views of the lake were so worth it!

Natural Bridge

View of the lake from our hike to Devil's Doorway

Sarai and her tree. At the end of one of our hikes, Sarai wanted out of the backpack carrier to walk and she asked to have her picture taken with this tree. How cute is that!

The result of five days of camping...but she loved every minute of it and has asked to sleep in the tent several times since arriving home :-)

As I said before, we chose to go on vacation before our big move into our new house. So we arrived home on a Saturday and began preparing to move the following Saturday. It was a crazy week of getting a new HVAC unit installed, ripping up old laminate flooring, having new carpet installed and packing up everything at our rental house, but we are SO excited to be in our own place again! If you do the math, we have been in limbo housing wise for just over 11 months now and I didn't realize how sweet it would feel to be in our own home that we chose as ours.

We also decided to have Sarai make the monumental transition from the crib to a twin bed when we moved into the new place. We had been talking it up to her a lot and when asked about moving to the new house she would respond, "Get a big girl bed!" Needless to say, I was anxious on Saturday night to see how the transition would really go. And surprisingly enough, she did great! We picked her up Saturday evening from her friend Hannah's house and she was very excited to come to the "new house" and see her "big girl bed." We snapped some pics of her enjoying her new big girl bed for the first time. But she has slept the past five nights in her new bed and done fabulous! I was more worried about naptime but she has done great with naps too. Knock on wood, but she even stays in bed till we come in to get her! She knows she can get out of her bed but for now, she chooses to wait on us. So my baby is offically a big girl now I guess :-( Makes me kinda sad but I'm so proud of her for making this big transition. Enjoy the pics!