Camping Trip!

Friday night, we went camping with our good friends Levi & Tana Antoine, and Scott & Lee Miller. It was our first time camping as a couple and therefore the first time the kids have been as well. We received a tent for a wedding gift and it is still unopened in our closet, because its not big enough for our whole family now! LOL. We also received a camping stove and a cooler for our wedding that came in quite handy! All this time we've had most of the gear and never went, shameful!

We went to BlackHawk which is up in the canyon outside of Peyson. I love that you can drive for 45 minutes to an hour and be in the remote mountains. We set up camp and threw our tin foil dinners in the fire. We each took turns watching kids or collecting firewood. One thing we didn't have that we want to get next time is an axe or hatchet to chop the bigger tree branches. For some reason I didn't wrap the dinners with enough foil so they were burned to a char. We were hungry enough that we tried to eat around it. At least the hotdogs we cooked for the kids turned out alright. And the peach cobbler Lee made in the dutch oven was fantastic!

It was much colder than anyone had expected! The wind was frigid and nearly destroyed camp because it was so fierce and never stopped! Most of us just wanted to pack up and go home, but amazingly enough stuck around. We finally got the kids to sleep. They had a hard time settling down (being the first time in a tent and having the wind whip it around so much I couldn't blame them!)

We huddled around the fire and tried not to get burned by the embers that were blowing around. I could have put the baby down, but she was keeping me warm so I snuggled close to her all night. Smores helped cheer us up a little and we enjoyed talking, laughing, & reminiscing.

Sleeping was poor for everyone but the kids. They seemed to stay warm enough all night. I kept expecting them to wake up crying because they were cold and they didn't. At least the wind died down at some point in the night!

For breakfast, I made sourdough pancakes which were a huge hit! The eggs were good, but the hashbrowns were just mushy. I wished I would have put the hot chocolate mix in but decided to put back at the last minute (because we were taking up so much orange juice and milk). The kids had a good time playing while we cleaned up breakfast. Before I knew it, we were tearing down camp and getting it all loaded in the car.

The rangers that kept care of the campgrounds came by to tell us that it was free to go up to Peyson lakes that day (normally $7/car) So after everything was cleaned up we drove down to the lakes. We all marveled at how kids can spend hours throwing things in the water (rocks, sticks, etc) and never get tired of it. A little competition developed between the 3 boys to see who could throw the biggest rock in the water. It was hilarious to see these little boys lugging these big boulders down to the water and trying to heave them in. Bryce decided rolling a rock down to the water worked better than trying to carry it, but he was so disappointed that rolling it into the water didn't make a splash.

All in all, it was a good trip. Cold! but good. As Marc and I talked about it last night, the part I enjoyed the most was seeing the excitement in my kids. I'm so glad that we were able to give them this experience and I hope we can continue to provide more experiences like this in the future. I think we might even try to squeeze in a trip to Yellowstone this summer, we'll see!