Camping! Summer 2011

I would never be able to truthfully say that I LOVE camping.  But I like it enough, and since we all enjoyed our camping trip last summer, we were excited.

But it definitely isn’t a “hop in the car” type activity.  It is amazing the amount of effort that goes into a camping trip for nearly 30 people.  Especially when it’s a trip within a trip, like it is for us.  I mean, the food alone is insane!  Maybe we need to learn to be more “live off the land” type of people, but we’ve got lots of picky eaters and lots of kids…we we wanted to make sure no one starved. 

 

 

Before we left, Lyndsy brought up concern about any water that may be near by our camp site.  We told her that it didn’t look like there would be any…but we still had a “rules” talk with all the kids before we left.  So imagine our surprise when we pulled up to find this full and fast river running completely through our entire camp site!

 

 

We had to be on high alert of all kids every second because this river flow was pretty fast and there had already been several drownings in UT by this point of the year.  It was beautiful, but definitely gave me anxiety!

 

We settled in and set up camp.  I think we put up like 8 tents between all of us?  Some of the older kids (Emmi & Maddie, Taylor & Jaden) had their own tent.  The weather was beautiful and it was a very relaxing first day. 

 

Lexi was very sad to be on crutches…so Mindy was kind and shared her iPad with her to entertain herself.

 

Bella (Gam’s dog) Lilly (Gertson’s dog) and Sammi (Hintze’s dog) all joined us as well.

 

Peyton sure loves her big cousin Emmi! (Emmi is 15 now)

 

 

    

 

The kids loved watching tucker chop the wood with the ax.  It sounded a little obscene (but hilarious) to hear Maddie and Emmi yelling “SWING THAT AX” really loud to cheer Tucker on.

  

Mindy and Lynda Ann prepared a great set up for us to make our own foil dinners.  They were absolutely delicious!!

Boston is so dang cute.  And Jaden loves exploring!

Mindy and Annie preparing dinner.  Love the hat!

This is so beautiful…the smoke from our campfire went downstream and hovered over the river to create this cool look.

Lots of mini-hikes for the kids

I’m sure Jeannine will hate me for putting this picture, but I think it is one of my all time favorites.  It’s scary, cute and funny all wrapped into one :-)

I was petting Sammi and she would hop up and hug me any time I started to walk away.  So funny!  And Peyton is sporting the Fruit Loop necklaces they made.

 

They the entire group (except myself, crippled Lexi, tired Peyton and baby Boston) took off on a 2 mile hike to some waterfalls.  They were gone nearly two hours.  Literally the MINUTE they returned, it started to rain.  After a minute, it was pouring.  After a few more minutes, we realized that this was NOT stopping any time soon.  It was 5:00 pm, dinner time and monsoon-type raining.  Decisions had to be made. 

Before we knew it…we were throwing things in cars, packing up wet tents, picking up soggy trash and trying to get the heck out of there (one whole day early!)  It took us two whole hours before we were loaded up and leaving and we were soaked!

 

Everyone kept great attitudes about it though.  We got a warm nights sleep inside our homes, and then gathered the next day to swim and cook our dinner at Gam & Pa’s house.  Our alternate plan ended up working out great!