Camping With Ethan

Last weekend Kyle and Grandpa Morrey took Ethan out for his first camping that didn't take place in someone's backyard. We tried to get Ethan excited by telling him that he would be having a picnic, going on a hike, eating s'mores, sleeping in a tent, and whatever else we could think of.

Ethan loved our picnic...
...and our hike. During our hike, Ethan kept saying, "This is a great trip!" ...

...but sadly, we didn't have anything to make S'mores with. Fortunately, Ethan was so ready to go to bed at the end of the day that he didn't even care.

Saturday morning we had our breakfast around the camp fire. Ethan saw other kids playing with sticks in the fire and ran off into the forest (or jungle, as he liked to call it). He came running back a minute later carrying two little sticks, no more than four inches long. He tried to play with them in the fire, but quickly realized that they wouldn't work so he ran off again and came back with a reasonably sized stick. He poked at the fire for a few minutes, and then realized that Dad didn't have a stick. He ran off again and came back with another four inch stick for Dad. Silly kid.

For the majority of our trip, Ethan was pretending to be one of The Incredibles. This tunnel we found was just like the tunnel on the movie, and Ethan loved walking through it.

We were getting ready to go home, but Ethan didn't want to leave. He decided he would sit on the big rock by the side of the road, but...

...he tripped and bonked his head on one of the more jagged pieces. The wound wasn't too bad and clotted all by itself within a few minutes.

One of Ethan's newer personalities is Mr. Incredible's super-hero friend, Frozone. He loves to run around "icing" things. (for anyone who is concerned about his accident from the camping trip, you can see in the following picture taken a week later that it is not very big, and is healing nicely.)

Sadly, we don't have any pictures of Brooklyn this week. She's been expanding her vocabulary like crazy. Yesterday we were walking down the isle in a store and to our suprise she started saying "princess" and pointed to a picture of a Disney princess. She can also say "Buzz," "Woody," "Syndrome," "Super Why," "cereal," and she'll try to repeat pretty much anything we ask her too.

Not only is she saying new words, she actually using them to communicate. For the last while, we'sll walk into her bedroom and she'll say, "up." After picking her up she said, "diaper." She lets us know when she wants milk, cereal, shoes, dressed, chips, etc. It's so nice to know what she wants.