Really, it's Labor Day Weekend already!?

Well I started to post this last week and you see how far I got. Anyway, we went camping Labor day weekend and here's the post...

I can not believe it's Labor Day weekend! Last weekend we went camping - probably our last trip of the summer. We spent the weekend with Rick, Mindy and the girls. On Monday, our friend Paul and his two boys came out for a few days. By Tuesday, I had had enough camping and came home (which was planned) and the boys stayed until Wednesday. It was very strange to be home by myself Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning. There were a couple cute stories. Paul's oldest, Maximus is 5. Drew kept calling him Maxin. At one point he told me he didn't love me anymore, he liked the guys cuz Maxin (who he'd met once before) is his best friend.
We also got Drew some swimming wings so he could work on his floating. He did really well with them. Much better than the life jacket which is too confining for learning how to swim. He'd float to where his chin would be in the water, then kick a few times and jump back up. Pretty good I thought. Looking forward to next year where I hope we can get the swimming mastered.
We also went 'sploring on a one mile loop through the woods. Since Michigan has gotten blasted by the EAB there were hundreds of dead trees and plenty near the path. Paul introduced us to tree tipping and the boys had a blast. They would walk up to the dead trees and tip them away from the path to give the squirrels ramps and fun things to do and keep them from falling on the path. We were amazed at how many more trees were in such bad shape after just having done the same path in June. Massive piles of bark were on the path. Some of the trees were so bad you could touch them and they would disintegrate.
We also learned that camping during the week is the way to go. Every weekend we've been at Sugarloaf it is packed. They may have one site open. But come Sunday when we stayed and everyone left, it felt like a ghost town. Drew also went to Haley's for the night so Mike & I were alone camping and felt very strange to be sitting in a large area with no one around and no munchkins asking when we can go exploring, swimming, to the park, for a bike ride etc. We had a nice relaxing evening but it was strange.