adventures in camping

This weekend, we headed south to go camping with our friends Jason & Melanie and their children.  We planned this trip more than a month ago and the kids were SO excited it was finally happening!

Forgive me for posting so many Luke-in-crib pictures; I couldn't resist as he reminded me so much of the ones I took of Jules at the same age when we were camping in the Rockies.  (I probably have some of Isaac somewhere, but he and Luke aren't twinners the same way Luke and Jooj are).

After we set up camp, we started making dinner (we made dinner & they made breakfast; we both packed lunches for the next day.  It was really nice to just focus on one meal!).  Neil insisted that camping deserved some bratwurst, so he was super happy about tasty meat, and the kids (after they asked me half a dozen times if they were tofu dogs or turkey dogs or the kind of hot dogs that have smashed-up worms in them--um, yes, guilty of brainwashing my children) consented to roast hot dogs (and some of them even ate them--but mostly they lived on strawberries).

 After dinner we played at a fun little playground and then went back for the main event--s'mores!  I think the kids made Melanie half a dozen s'mores, which she accepted very graciously each time without any diminishing of enthusiasm.  (She is Abigail's new piano teacher, and Abigail just adores her.)

 I was really glad the kids had such a fun evening, because the next part of the night was a little hairy.  Jules wrapped her hand around a lantern and burned her palm very badly--big, oozing blister--Neil & Jason gave her a blessing and she was able to sleep.  She woke up the next day and her hand was completely fine.  It was interesting because I've been working on a lesson about women & the priesthood for my Laurel class; I started preparing this lesson five weeks ago (I taught it today) and it was almost done, but I felt like there was something missing.

I ended up using that experience with Juliet as my intro today and talked about how grateful I was that the men were able to administer to Juliet and that I never felt shortchanged that night by not being able to bless her myself; I was the one who was comforting her, spreading the burn gel on her palm, getting her ice packs, and I was the one who asked them to give her a blessing and held her while they blessed her.  I spoke with the YW in my class about how my husband and I worked together as partners to ensure our daughter's health and well-being, and how I felt like both of our contributions were equally valid (on that note, I learned SO MUCH in preparing that lesson, so please shoot me an email if that's something you have questions about and I'd be happy to share my notes!!).

Next on the not-so-fun list...Isaac had a crazy nightmare and woke up screaming several times.  Finally, around midnight, we gave up and brought him out and he sat with us while Jason & Neil did their best to scare off the crazy raccoons pacing around our campsite.  Best part:  watching the raccoon fall off the picnic table after a particularly well-placed rock (they were not AT ALL bashful and it was seriously kind of scary to turn around and bam, raccoon!).  Then we went to bed and realized our air mattresses had completely deflated and they were somehow punctured--plus Isaac kept begging us to take him home.  It was a long night and nobody got much sleep.

 I loved this shot--breakfast babies!

The next day we went hiking.  I didn't take many photos (which I really regret) because I was carrying Isaac almost the entire way (my arms ached when I first got up this morning!)  It was really hot (around 90) so I was glad we were mostly hiking down in the ravines, which were a good ten degrees cooler.  And, of course, the Juliet Hair Barometer shows the increasing humidity...

When we stopped for lunch, it was SO HOT!  Suffocatingly so.  Melanie and I started prepping the lunch and then I heard gleeful laughter and splashing and turned around to see this...

 We ended up just lying on the grass for a good hour while the kids played in the water (then we went on one final mini-hike but everyone's shoes were so wet that we couldn't do much more).  We definitely didn't do as much hiking as we wanted to do, but it was so fun to hang out with friends (the chitchat around the campfire when the kids are in bed is always the best part!) and I think the little folks had an absolute blast in their unplanned spigot adventure!

And, of course, we completely wore everyone out...the kids conked out 5 minutes after we got in the car and I slept for 12 hours last night.  Good times.

Way beyond cornfields

So we live in quite the agricultural state.  Most of the time I love it--we have awesome produce, no air pollution, beautiful trees and a wonderful growing climate--but there are some times that I really miss hiking in the mountains.

But guess what!!  Our agricultural state has some beautiful, beautiful, beautiful terrain.  Today we spent most of the day hiking around and had a fantastic time.  One of the best parts was the hour-long drive there--the trees were just beautiful.  Absolutely gorgeous.

The first hike we went on today was described in the park's map as "rugged/very rugged" and was described as the most uneven terrain in the park.  It started out as a gentle stroll through the woods, then some fun railroad-tie type stairs down a hill, then some SERIOUS stairs.  SO many stairs, and really steep!!  Neil and I were both not huge fans of the stairs since we were each carrying one of the boys; Juliet and Abigail just trudged right along (and as you can see in the pictures where we're coming back up the stairs, they just went up using their hands.  They were that steep!)



The stairs offloaded us directly into the ravine's streambed, and we then hiked upstream over fallen logs, rock piles, rock faces, rocks in water, water pools...you get the idea.  It was very fun, very wet, very muddy, and very keep-your-attention-on-where-you're-walking.  I was honestly amazed that none of us took a header off a rock--there were a couple of times where I was terrified that I was going to fall face-first and smash Luke, especially since every time I changed my footing he wiggled around and my center of gravity would totally change!  I didn't take any pictures during this part because I needed both hands almost every second (and after I dropped the camera in the stream I figured I should just put it away).  We hiked up the stream to a waterfall and I sat on some boulders to feed Luke while everyone else ran around and fell in the mud and the stream.  Abigail clambered around the boulders and said she saw a fast way down and we were like, oh, no, honey, we have to go back the way we came--but she was right!!!  We went back down the stream and up the hundreds (I exaggerate not) of stairs only to see the people who had passed us while we were sitting on the boulders--and they had picked up the map that had fallen out of my pocket.  So we hiked an extra mile back down the streambed and up the stairs instead of the tenth of a mile easy walking back to the trailhead.  Oh well.  Abigail didn't gloat too much.  :-)

In any event, I honestly thought this was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.  Observe:

Is this seriously not so beautiful?  Don't you all want to come visit us now?!

And last but not least, this is not the greatest photo ever, but it is the only photo I have of all six of us.  Ever.  And therefore I love it, glare, shadows, grimaces, Luke's weird mohawk-looking hair, and all.