Vacation Post 1 - Leaving Home

So we were on vacation 'up nort' over the last five days (June 21-26) in celebration of our 10 year wedding anniversary (actual date was June 12 but Derek was still in school). It was a great time spent camping, hiking and just being together as a family.

As an additional 'bonus' we decided this would be a good time to get the wood floors on the first floor of our house refinished since the work requires that you essentially move out anyway. Sounds like a great plan, right? Sort of a two birds with one stone thing. Well, it worked. But. Imagine packing for a five to six (we actually came home a day early) day camping trip with two adults, a two year old and a 60 pound dog. Now imagine doing that while moving out of the main floor of your house and timing it so both are completed at the exact same time.

Stressful? Yes. Did it feel good to FINALLY leave? ABSOLUTELY!

So, I'm sure at this point you are just dying for some pictures. Well here you go. This first shot is of our 'front room' which is really a finished porch who's floors did not need refinished. It ended up being the destination for the large majority of our stuff. Not visible is a full sized upright piano, a large futon and a large overstuffed couch.
Seen from another angle. Our living room looked like the picture below. Yes, Henry is sitting on the potty (and I think he's 'driving a car, or a boat or a bulldozer or a tractor'). Most everything that you see sitting on the floor went into the car (except for the little bike).
Pictured below is what the car (var) looked like fully loaded. It doesn't look too bad in the picture but we were about as full as one could stuff a car AND a cargo box. If you look closely you can see that Henry was impatient to leave and is sitting backwards in his seat.
Not bad right? Well, look at this picture taken once we reached our first campsite and prepared to unpack.

Amazing that we managed to unpack and pack that thing a total of 3 times during our trip. It's a good thing we were packing light to 'rough it.' I'll finish this first write-up of our trip with a shot of Henry doing one of his favorite things. Chopping.
He saw dad using a little axe to chop wood into smaller pieces to start a fire and thought that was pretty much the coolest thing ever. So he found his 'chopper' and went to work. He has since become quite proficient at smacking things pretty hard with his little plastic hammer (chopper). That's all for now. We'll post more soon.