This is a photo of Jabin and me I took this afternoon. It was pretty tricky holding the camera and clicking, and getting us centered in the photo! Jabin kept wanting to reach for the lens cap, which was dangling down from the camera--that's why his hand is held out towards the camera.

Breaking News! While I was typing this, I had placed Jabin on his tummy beside me on the floor--and while I wasn't looking, he rolled himself over onto his back for the first time! YAY!

Jabin is about 4 1/2 months old right now, in case anyone is wondering.

Here's a bonus photo, taken last week sometime:

More breaking news: Last night Jabin actually went from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. before eating! Yes, I know it is only 7 hours, and he has actually gone longer before. But the bonus of this was the TIMING of it: instead of eating at 7 p.m. and waking up at 3, allowing Mommy only about 3 hours sleep, I got over 6 delicious hours of consecutive sleep, and it was WONDERFUL! I hope this is the beginning of a trend!

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The ice on the river broke sometime Monday night. Seems like it just froze over--I guess it WAS only February sometime. Also, thanks to the time change combined with our new northerly latitude, it was light outside until around nine o'clock last night!

I love spring! My thoughts have turned to bedding plants, yard clean-up, and buying a tent so we can go CAMPING for the first time in years! That was the bummer of working at the camp--we lived at a camp, and never got to go camping or take summer holidays as a family. I took holidays every summer with the kids, but Jason could never come, which sucked.

And since we've been married, we've only gone camping one time, in late, frigid September, with our friends Chris and Tegan Keil. That was back in 2000. I'm thinking our little 2-man pup tent is no longer going to accomodate our newly-resized family, so I was checking out tents in the Sears catalogue this morning. We are seriously short on other equipment, too, but we have enough that after we get a tent, we can go anyway--just maybe not in the lap of luxury. And I am so excited about that!

Camping conjures up plenty of childhood memories, mostly good ones. My dad was a professional guide and outfitter until I was twelve, so he had a couple of permanent camps set up in the mountains with his partner. On occasion, he would take the family out there, too. Besides that, Mom was super-frugal, so whenever we had to take a trip anywhere, we camped our way there. No eating out, either--just whip out the cooler and throw sandwiches together. I remember one time stopping at this campground (I think in the Kuusamo area), and it was bitterly cold and windy, but we were all hungry. So we stopped in this little day-area site and had our mayo-and-bean sandwiches, trying to keep everything from blowing away.

Then, of course, there were the youth camping trips. Way too fun. A whole weekend out in the wild with your friends, and if you were lucky the boy you had a crush on came too. Three whole days with which to flirt with him! Heaven! It was also a bonus if the boy your FRIEND had a crush on was there, so you could tease her all weekend!

Of course, there were plenty of adults around, so there wasn't much chance of getting into any trouble (fortunately. Teenagers are all hormones and not much brain power.) Also, there was always the kid in the next tent that didn't WANT to be awake giggling and playing Truth Or Dare all night, and I remember several shouted "Shut up!"s and a shoe or two thrown our way. Still, that's the stuff memories are made of.

And that's what I want to give our kids--plenty of fabulous memories of family camping trips, and other family together times, so they will always have that to draw on when they get older. Sometimes it seems that things are shared around a campfire that wouldn't come up anywhere else.

Could be a bit interesting right now, though, with the baby. But I'm willing to try that at least once!