Back-pack trip #1!

Ben miraculously was able to get 1 1/2 days off - unplanned.  It may not be to the best of reasons - super low surgeries happening (well maybe that is best for the patients . . .), but we decided to take full advantage and do something we've never done before - take the whole family backpacking.  Ben and our two boys went last year (same place) with another dad and his sons.  It was a great place and so we decided to go as a family.  We left Thursday afternoon and by the time we got to the trailhead, ate a snack, lifted our packs on our back, it was close to 5pm.  We hiked in for 1 1/2 miles to the meadow and made camp there.  We ate dinner (thanks to Subway) and got our tents all set up.  Since we only have 1 backpacking tent that fits three, the boys made a tepee for themselves.  We had a good evening complete with a fire and s'mores - though instead of chocolate, we smeared Nutella on our grahams.  Yum.

Ready.  Set.  Go!

Handsome Miles on the trail.

Cutie Lucy and her pack stuffed with her sleeping bag and a bunch of silly toys she had to bring.

Cute, cute!

Here is the meadow area.  Emmy carried Lucy's backpack from the trail to our campsite.  What a sis.

The girls "decorated" their little "fort" area with all the miscellaneous stuff that Lucy brought along.  Girls will be girls.

The boys and their awesome tepee.

This was a cool view-spot a little ways from our camping spot.  The picture doesn't do it justice - it was really beautiful.

A nice evening.  They all wanted to snuggle up to Ben.  :)

We awoke the next morning uneaten and that is always nice.  After breakfast we basically packed up our stuff and headed out on the trail.  We hiked for 2 1/2 miles and made it to the lower Powderhorn lake.  It was a beautiful and lovely hike.  The kids did really well (less complaints than the day before - the trail is a little steep in the beginning).

A cool tepee in the fire-smokey air.

Heading out - so adorable.

I show this picture to show all the snow that was still up there!  We had to cross snow many times.

Aw, these two were such cuties on Friday.  They became hiking buddies because they were the "slow-pokes."  As Jonas said, "We are the youngest of our gender."  :)  Ben and I took turns following the slow-pokes.  When I was behind them, it was just the cutest and sweetest thing ever.  Lucy kept asking Jonas to tell him certain fairy tales and Jonas kept telling them to Lucy.  A great moment for sure.

Pretty flowers - I love them so much!

This is right before the lake.  This area is is the beaver ponds and we later went fishing down there.  Pretty, pretty!

Oh where oh where can my Miles be?

Pretty Powderhorn lake.

The girls and their boo.  Once, finishing up a break, Emmy said, "Wait!  I need to suck on my boo first."  Silly girls.

We made it to the lake and then went back a little ways to set up camp.  It was a beautiful spot - closer to the beaver ponds.  We were all set up by like noon or something and so we had a lot of day left.  We passed some of the time by fishing:

It took a bit of fishing to find the perfect spot, but once we did, 3 fish were caught in like 1 minute.  Miles was first.

Emmy was next.  Ha, her face is so great in this picture!

But she really likes fishing and is way less squirmy with worms than Miles is.  She has no problems cutting them in half.

Finally Jonas got one as well.  Then the kids just played and played and played with their fish.  Yes, play with them.  It's crazy.  It took us a while to catch "Lucy's fish," but Ben finally did - and got another for himself.

Everyone and their 5 fish.  Fun, fun!

We had some down time before dinner.  I had brought a ball to play some game.  Which we did for a bit.  Then we played a bit of Uno as well.  Then the kids played some type of made-up game in which they had to go out and gather pine-cones - their "food."  I wish I would have remembered my book at this point.

Then we got dinner going.

And, yes, that included freshly-caught fish.  I think everyone liked the fish except Jonas and Lucy.  Ben LOVED his and told me so - multiple, multiple times.  :)

Our camping spot - cool, huh?!  That evening, after dinner, we walked up to the lake.  A gentleman pointed out a moose and so we just sat down and watched him - the moose, not the man.  The moose was just laying down, but still it was neat.  Again, we had a great fire and some more s'mores.  :)

And again, we woke up uneaten and so we were again relieved.  :)  Ben and I were a bit cold that night, but the kids all said they were fine.  Half of Miles' body was outside of the tepee, yet he said he was fine!  The kids sleep so well - I am jealous of them.

After breakfast we went back to the lake to try some more fishing, but there is just no nice shore there to fish from and so that didn't last long.  We came back to camp and the kids pumped some fresh water for our water bottles while Ben and I started packing things up.  The kids came back and finished packing up their packs and then we were off again.  We had 4 miles to do this day and so it was good to get out early before it was too hot.

Ben was less excited about his 2nd tepee, but it was still pretty cool.  He was going for something else at one point, but what we ended up with was a gymnastics "bar" for chin-ups, swinging, etc.  That worked!

The hike back went really well and we hardly had any complaints.  Emmy came up with the plan that anytime someone complained, he/she would lose 5 minutes of their Saturday game-time.  It seemed to have worked really well.  :)  We ate lunch at our first camping spot, Camp Tepee.  (Our second camping spot was named Camp Backpack, in honor of this being our family's first backpacking trip.)

Everyone did so well.  Especially our little 4-year old that hiked the entire 8-miles (total, round-trip distance) on her own.  With her little pack - that was carried once by Emmy for like 50 feet and that was carried once by Jonas for like a 1/4 mileat most.  So happy and proud of all of them.

As we were driving out on the 10-mile dirt road that lead to the trail-head, we saw a bear.  A truly rather large brown bear (although the color was more golden to me).  We tried to grab our camera for a picture, but it lumbered off and out of sight.  That was the first bear that Miles, Jonas, and Emmy had ever seen (Lucy had seen them when she and I went to Alaska).  It was crazy.  Ben and I were both happy we saw the bear as we were heading out and not in . . .

And some videos for you viewing pleasure:

I.T.T.W or is it I.T.T.W.W ??

I named our Wednesday "get outdoors" group - Into the Wild Wednesdays.  Or should it be In To The Wild Wednesdays?  I'm not sure I know much difference between into and in to . . .

We had a good hike today - hot, but some much-needed shade offered at times as well.

Mice Mines hike:

 On the way up we came across some shallow ponds and found . . . tadpoles!  So fun!  The kids loved them, caught them, and begged me to let them take them home as pets.  Sorry, nope.  :)

 Here is some of the bunch at the mine site - this was a cave you could go in to maybe 10 feet?

 Here is our whole group that made it - minus Jennifer, the photographer.  Awesome.

On the way back we stopped by the tadpole area again.  You could see the hind-legs forming on some.  Plus, they kept coming up for air and that was cool.

It was a good hike!

Summer Days . . .

Well, we are all surviving summer!  Yay for us!  We just had 3 out of our 4 kids with fevers this past weekend.  But everyone was pretty much fever-free yesterday and so that is good!  Here is what happened yesterday:

Emmy really wanted to sew.  Or, rather, learn to sew.  Or, rather, just play around with a sewing machine.  I found something I had pinned a while back and so I printed it up and she loved it.

 There were 2 cute sheets for her to just simply practice sewing straight lines and pivoting.  She did a "dot to dot" sheet that made a cute and simple sewing machine, and then she also worked on a maze.

 Fun, fun!  (Well at least for one of the girls.  :)

 Look at that concentration.  We'll have to do this some more!

We signed up the boys for Brain Chase.  You can read all about it here.  I don't want to explain it all myself.  It seems awesome - and it's developed and created by a couple we know (and not just know  - Allan is one of Ben's best Littleton buddies from way back when.  Yes, that makes us practically famous.).  Well the boys received their first official mail from Brain Chase yesterday - it included a welcome letter that was sealed with wax and an awesome decoder.

 Right away the boys had to figure out a clue.

So super fun and cool!

I'm already totally in love with Brain Chase.  Like a lot.

Miles' First EYO Campout

EYO = Eleven-year old.  This past Friday night Miles was able to go on his first Boy Scout camp-out.  There is a new official BSA camp "near" us - about 3 hours away.  The camp invited some EYO troops to come for an overnighter - to give its staff some practice experience before the real camps begin next week.  We were excited that Miles got to go.  We sent him with our camera and, as expected from Miles, ended up with a few interesting pictures.  :)  He had fun, although he had a headache both days (Friday and Saturday - he had a headache at home before he left, but didn't say anything.  I could tell he wasn't feeling great when he got home late Saturday night.  Too bad the silly boy didn't ask for some ibuprofen!).

Anyways, here are a few pictures:

 Miles, all packed up and ready to go!

 The inside of the boys' tipi.  Looks nice.  :)

Playing in the dark.

 Their tipi.  He told us how he and another boy were trying to go to sleep (It was close to 11pm) in their Tipi, but the other boys were being loud, "farting," and the such.  Sounds like a boys' camp-out!  The leader had to come in and take the boys' flashlights away (as previously warned), but not Miles', because according to Miles, he "wasn't doing anything."

 "Oh, that's the night sky!"  said my Miles as we were looking at his pictures.  :)

 The boys in the dining hall eating breakfast.

Miles liked the lights in the dining hall . . . and so he took a picture of one.  :)

 Miles' EYO troop.

 One of their activities was "bubble soccer."  I think Miles was possibly a little short for this?  He liked it, but was tired and suffering from his headache at this point.  He took a video of it as well.

Hmmm, the girls' bathroom (port-a-potty) that they were able to use.  I have no idea why Miles took this picture, but he was pretty excited to tell us how it flushed and that there was a sink in it.  Funny and weird kid!

He told us about the campfire, the spiders, the songs they sang, etc.  We're glad he had a good time!

Lake San Cristobal 10K

A couple of friends of mine and myself decided to sign up for the Lake San Cristobal run.  I signed up for the 10K and my friends for the 5K.  One friend wasn't able to make it since she was sick, but Kandace Booth and I and our families made the race into a camping trip as well.  If I wasn't running, I'm not sure we would have gone camping!  The weather forecast was for thunderstorms on Friday, Friday night, and Saturday.

As soon as we got to Lake City on Friday, it was pouring!  Just pouring!  Not a good time to set up a tent.  Luckily we drove around a few campgrounds and then went back in to town to wait for our friends to hook up with them.  By that time, the rain had stopped and so we were able to set up camp without getting soaked.

 We had a lovely camp-site right next to the Booths.  The kids are always excited about camping and had fun inside and outside of the tent.

 Boys and fire.  Miles had just put on some dry pine needles and made Kolter and Jonas come to watch it fire up.

 After dinner there were s'mores of course.

 We lucked out for the evening - no rain!  We were able to cook, eat, and visit without it raining.  A blessing indeed!  Emmy kept begging and begging to go to bed, so we finally got all ready in our tent and had a pretty good night.  The kids were out all night.  Ben said he actually slept really well, too.  I woke up a bunch, but was able to get right back to sleep.  It rained all night.  I took Lucy to the bathroom in the morning and saw lovely blue sky . . . but it was not to last.

Kandace's husband drove me and Kandace down to the registration point and then we got shuttled up to the starting point.  It was pouring rain the entire time!  But the rain did let up for our run and it was just a cool drizzle.

 Haha, what a funny picture.  Ben grabbed this shot of me as they passed me on my run.

 I love this picture!  One of my favorites ever.  :)  There's Lucy, my littlest biggest fan cheering me on as I come to the finish.

 There I am at the finish line - all done, yay!

And here is Kandace and I.  We had a fun camp-out and a fun and wet run.  We stayed afterwards for a bit - it was so cold, though.  Emmy and Lucy pretty much stayed in the car.  We got some lunch and then headed home.  It would have been nice to have stayed and fished and hiked, but not in that weather.  We'll just have to go back to Lake City . . . it's so beautiful!

I think this will be a new tradition for us and the Booths and whoever else wants to come:  camping and then the race.  Two fun things!

P.S.  It's a pretty small race - I think there was around 70 of us that did either the 5K walk, 5K run, or the 10K run.

The Flip-flop Club

One Sunday morning Emmy started a club.  She called it the Flip-flop club - it was just she and Lucy.  It was a "service club" Emmy said.  Her first service was helping Lucy write thank-you letters to Lucy's preschool teachers (i.e., moms).  It was so sweet and Lucy was able to hand out these letters at our little end-of-year preschool party.  The notes were thoughtful - Emmy had Lucy think of something fun that each mom did and was thanked for it.

Then Emmy decided the next thing the Flip-flop club was going to do was buy toys for "the poor people."  So that night she started asking for donations.  Luckily we had the bishopric over for dinner and so the club got a few donations that night.  Over the next couple of weeks the girls would ask people.  They ended up with close to $20 (unfortunately Lucy blew about $1.50 at our boys' lemonade/cookie stand they did last week . . . much to Emmy's frustration!).

Today I took Emmy to a local store on Main Street and we choose a few gifts - 2 for a girl and 2 for a boy.  There is a home in town that helps kids and families that are in abusive homes and gives them a place to stay.  I think we'll try and drop them off there - hopefully sometime on Thursday.

 Here was my letter from Lucy (written by Emmy).  Love!

 Here are the gifts we got.  For a girl:  an adorable stuffed turtle (you can't see how cute it is, but it's so cute I almost want to keep it :) and a little koala jewelry box.  For a boy:  sand and a sock-monkey that slings/flings.

 She wanted me to take a picture of the inside of the koala box.  A cute necklace.

The other member of the Flip-flop club.  She wanted a picture of her, too.  Even though she inappropriately used the clubs' funds, she was not kicked out.

It was a little hard for Emmy.  She had all this money (more money than she probably has ever had!) and wanted to buy something for herself at times.  But I reminded her that this money was donated to her club - knowing it would go to buy toys for "the poor people."  She handled it well.

What a sweet and thoughtful girl Emmy can be!