Our Camping Trip Near Pescadero from Christiaan VandenHeuvel on Vimeo.

Jack's 7th Birthday!

For his 7th birthday, Jack got to pick one friend to do something fun with. He picked a friend from school, Grant Garcia.

Grant scored huge points by giving Jack a cool Lego Starwars set.

Jack wanted to go play miniature golf with Grant. They had a great time running around the course!

Bakker Family Camping Trip

I thought I should add a little text to the pictures Christiaan posted -- he's on the ball!

We always try to vacation together in the summer. This year, we were able to camp for a week at Bass Lake with Kristina's WHOLE family: her parents; her sister, Karen, and her husband, Alan, and six kids (a real treat! since they live in China and are only home every 3-4 years!); her brother, Dan, and his wife, Crystal, and two of their boys; her brother, Jordan, and his wife, Erin, and their two little girls (ages 18 months and 3 months!). Dan and Crystal also brought along Crystal's nephew, Hayden - 16, and niece, McKenna - 13. Hayden is the good-looking guy with brown curly hair holding Eliana in one of the pictures. McKenna has long hair and is so cute! They were awesome to have there - great attitudes, very fun, and helpful. Let me total that for you: 10 adults + 15 kids.

We all did TENTS! I'll give you a moment to let that sink in.

We all grew up tent-camping, so we were looking forward to it, and with today's super-sized, multi-roomed tents, it's pretty nice.


Dan and Crystal have a boat, and our campsites were within walking distance to the lake. So we'd have a slow morning, pack up lunches, snacks, swim stuff, sunscreen and the kids and head down to the lake. We had a little stretch of beach where the kids could easily play in the water, and we'd take turns heading out in the boat for water fun! They have great "toys" for all the ages to be able to experience being pulled behind the boat. Jack's favorite was the race car toy -- you sit in it and bounce a lot!

In the evening, each family took a turn at making dinner (at catering quantity!), and the kids played and played, we played games, and later we roasted marshmallows, made s'mores and learned a new favorite: honey bears. I'll blog instructions later.

A fun time was had by all! The babies did great - Eliana was 2 months, and Brenna (Jordan's daughter) was 3 months. Tents, bottles, pack n' plays, dirt...what more could you want?? :)

Link to more photo's and videos of our Bass Lake vacation.