Stake Campout at Spencer's Beach - Day 1

Our stake had a campout on Easter weekend at Spencer's Beach State Park which is over on the other side of the island. The kids had Good Friday off of school so the campout started on Thursday but since Matt had some work to do, we didn't go over until Friday morning. We stopped in Waimea for supplies and got there around noon. We set up the tent and then headed to the beach where we spent the rest of the day. This is really a great beach/park. The water was really calm and it was a perfect place for the little kids. The stake had rented out the entire camping section so it was all church members camping. Since we got there on Friday our campsite wasn't right next to the beach which would have been fun but it was still great. We hung out at the beach until sunset and boy, was it a gorgeous sunset! I wish so badly we lived on the west side of the island sometimes. The east side is prettier in my opinion but the west side gets the sunsets. We headed up to our campsite and cooked our hotdogs on our little barbeque. We hadn't planned very well so all we had were a package of hot dogs and some chips and the kids were still hungry. Lucky for them, the people next to us (who had a huge setup with a generator to run all of their equipment) came over and asked if we were hungry and wanted to share their food. Although I was a bit embarassed because it was probably obvious we hadn't brought much, we took them up on it and the kids were very grateful. They had all kids of food and we sat and visited or "talked story" as they say here for about an hour. The husband is a high councilman and the wife spoke in our Relief Society Enrichment meeting a couple of months ago and her presentation really made an impression on me. We met her sisters and mother and had a great time. People are so generous and loving here. Then we went back over and put the kids to bed (well, put them in their sleeping bags, they continued to giggle and make noise for awhile). Then we sat down and talked to the people on the other side of us for a couple of hours. They are in a very similar situation as us so we had a lot to talk about. He is a professor in Geography at UH-Hilo and they have four young kids too. Matt set up the cot outside the tent and slept out under the stars while I was left to sleep in between Aidan and Sabrina which made for a bit of a restless night. Aidan rolled all over me during the night and by morning I was sharing Sabrina's pillow with her because Aidan had crawled over and taken over mine. Not the best night sleep but the kids all had a blast. Aidan was really upset the next day when Matt took the tent down. One thing we noticed was that camping here is different from the mainland. Camping is not about simplicity, they bring everything but the kitchen sink. Most people had so much food, equipment, etc. I felt very underprepared compared to everyone else.




The building to the left was a pavillion with a huge covered area with tables for eating and bathrooms. It also had huge sinks on the outside for washing dishes, etc.


Can you tell they were excited? This was Aidan's first time camping.

Matt with Joe Jensen, our friend who is moving to Orem to be an astronomy professor at UVU

The girls love their new goggles!

Matt bought a nerf football in Waimea and it turned out to be the best toy. He spent a ton of time throwing it back and forth with Aidan and on Saturday he spent a lot of time playing with some kids in the ward with it.

Matt loves to sit and watch sunsets. If we lived on the west side I think he'd do this every night.

Gorgeous!