The First Camping Trip of the Summer!

We love to go camping, and we were really excited when Lins & Glendon asked us if we wanted to go over Memorial Day weekend. Our plan was to leave on Friday and come home on Monday. But... those plans didn't exactly work out!
Everything started off great - we were all packed up & Ryan & Glendon both got off work early. So we headed up to Strawberry on Friday afternoon. We had reserved a campsite on line, and even though none of us had actually been to that campground, we were sure it would be fine. So we drove through beautiful Provo canyon and into Heber. And then we kept going, and going, and going! Our campsite was a lot further away than away of us had known- it took about an hour and a half to get there. Now, that's not too bad of a drive for camping, but it was just funny because none of us realized how far away it was! (I know, I know... with mapquest & google maps, you'd think one of us would have typed in the location before we reserved the spot to see how far it was - but nope! It's actually more fun & adventurous this way!!)
Finally we saw a sign that said our campground was only 5 miles away. I looked out the window and said to Ryan: "This is just sagebrush! Where are all the trees?" We thought (hoped!) there would be more trees when we got to the actual campground...but we were wrong! Welcome to sagebrush camping! I was seriously cracking up when we pulled into the campground! It was just too funny that we had driven that far to camp in sagebrush!! And then, on top of that, most people there had trailers, and there weren't a lot of good spots to put up a tent. And when I say there weren't a lot of good spots, it's really not an exageration. Check out the picture! (love the sagebrush, huh? haha!)
As you can see, we did finally find room for Lins & Glendon's tent ( we had to move to a different spot than the one we reserved though, because there was literally no where to put a tent!), and we ended up putting our tent up on the pavement! How funny is that?! We were all just happy that we could find a place for both tents, though. At first we thought we were going to have to go somewhere else since you can't really pitch a tent on top of the sagebrush!
Everyone was still in good spirits, though! The kiddos started playing while Glendon got dinner started.

Here are Mauri & Scooter outside our tent. They are both in jackets because our next sweet surprise was that it started sprinkilng! It wasn't too bad, though! Luckily it wasn't a total downpour!
Mauri & Scooter playing in the sagebrush. Scooter fell down so Mar was helping him up!
Breaking in their camping clothes - it's just not the same if you're not covered in dirt! (check out their hands!!)
Glendon- aka "The Camp Chef!" He cooked tinfoil dinners for us that first night, and they were so good! G-man has had a lot of camping/scouting experience, so we were really lucky that he volunteered to be in charge of the food! I hope he doesn't mind if we "volunteer" him on future camping trips!
More dirt! Lins brought these really cute buckets & shovels that the kids a blast playing with! And it wasn't raining hard enough to make the dirt turn into mud. This kind of dirt brushes off so easily- so we didn't mind that they were getting really dirty!
Ryan, Glendon & Lins
After dinner it started to get a little bit chilly... and then a little bit windy. And then it got really windy. We got the kids cleaned up and in their jammies and then sat around the fire and roasted marshmallows. We were all kind of tired, so we didn't stay up & play games that night. We went to bed. And I was FREEZING! I seriously can't remember the last time I was cold when I went camping! Probably at girls camp! Our sleeping bags are so warm- and Ryan is like a permanant space heater! He is always warm - so if I'm ever cold I just snuggle up with him and Bam! - I'm warm! But for some reason I could not warm up. I kept falling asleep & waking up, and then finally I put on my hoodie and that helped a lot!
But then- Scooter started crying. This happens sometimes where he'll just cry for a minute in the night -but it's not like he's really awake. Usually it doesn't last long at all, but this time he woke up all the way and we couldn't get him back to sleep! We didn't want to wake up Lins & Glendon so we went to sit in the car for a minute. Scooter snuggled with Ryan and we were sure he would fall back asleep in a few minutes. But he didn't. So we turned on our portable DVD player because I was sure if we watched a movie for a minute it would distract him enough that he would fall back asleep. Now that I think about that - it doesn't sound very logical! But that's the best I could come up with at 3:30/4am! But scooter still didn't fall back asleep. Finally he said he wanted to go back in the tent so we went! Yay! And he actually fell back asleep...for about three minutes and then he started crying again! I don't know if it was just not being in our normal surroundings or if he was cold too! Or if it was something else! So he & I went back to the car & let Ry sleep for a bit. We were all so tired & I really felt bad for Scooter - he had been awake since 3:30 and he was trapped in the car with a mean, tired momma! He kept saying to me "Home! Home!"
Anywho... time passed and a while later Lins & Glendon woke up so we went to sit by the fire with them. One thing I forgot to mention- when we went to sit in the car in the middle of the night, we were afraid our tent was giong to blow away- so we put all our camp chairs and a big bundle of firewood in the tent. The next morning when Lins & Glendon got up and we were talking to them, Glendon was like: "Someone stole our firewood!!!" I said, um, woops! That was us - we put it in our tent because we were afraid it was going to blow away! Tee hee! Scooter did finally fall back asleep around 9 or 9:30 and he slept on my shoulder for a few hours.
Later that day it rained a little bit harder, but once it let up we let the kids come out and play! We were all going a little stir crazy playing in the tents! The only bad thing was that now the ground was definitely muddy - not just dusty! But we just let them play for a while & then we cleaned them up!

Here is a pictuer of Scooter playing in the mud!
Another muddy picture! I was really happy that all of the mud came out of his pants when we got home!
Once we got the kids cleaned up we let them play in the tent & then we held them when we came out to eat dinner. Scooter was so tired he fell asleep in Ryan's lap after dinner!
We had a really fun time camping - even though it was kind of crazy! And the three of us actually ended up coming home Saturday night - and then Lins & Glendon came home Sunday morning. We are looking forward to our next camping trip, though! But we're going to go somewhere a little closer... and hopefully it will be sunny!