We went on a getaway earlier this week.  It can be exhausting waiting for the phone to ring or an email to come in about a job opportunity.  It’s important to keep your spirits up, so we’ve been trying to frequent parks and take in as much fresh air as we can.  That’s a difficult thing to do living in the city, so we decided to go camping.

We were headed up to OK, but found out there was a burn ban, and what’s the fun in camping without a fire?  We ended up at Martin Creek State Park, in one of their little cabins.  We like to do tent camping, but Illianna is still a little too young.  Illianna loved running around the cabin and exploring the woods.  She was collecting things and giggling at every corner.  I’ve never seen her so filthy, and let me say she is a regular mess pot, but this took the cake.  I turned a blind eye to the dirt until she grabbed some cereal which had obviously fallen in the dirt/ash and came up to me with dirty hands and a black mouth trying to spit it out.  Poor little thing.  She’s so well trained to pick her food up and eat it after it’s fallen on the floor.

It was nice to see trees older than a couple of years, and we almost had the park to ourselves, but there was a huge power plant humming in the distance and a stupid train announcing its presence every hour or so.  We were able to see some wildlife, roast marshmellows, hike around, and see a few more stars than we can see from our backyard, but we won’t be returning to that park.  We managed to take a pretty decent photo of ourselves.

          

Thank goodness you can bathe them…

          

Illianna doesn’t like green foods just yet. They have a strong flavor and when you know there are yummy things out there like peaches and sweet potatoes to eat, who wants to eat their veggies? She does better with green beans than peas, but still makes the funniest faces. It’s hard not to laugh at these faces and I wouldn’t change them for anything. I started to think, one day when she does like green beans and peas, I’m really going to miss this, so I reached for the camera. She is one smart cookie and a big ham. The second the camera came out green beans were no longer this disgusting thing they were just a few seconds ago. Maybe she’s got more sense than to let me take future blackmail photos. Here’s the best I could do.