July is for Swimming and Camping

We are surviving these hot summer days with trips to pool and trips into the mountains.  Last week Amy brought the kids over to swim.  We had a little too much fun with the waterproof camera!

 

Soph was trying to hard to get her face under long enough for a picture to be taken!

 

 

 

 

 

"Take a picture of me, Curry!"  I'm loving how Luke says my name these days!

We just got home early this morning from two nights of camping up American Fork Canyon.  It was a lot of fun, but camping with a 1-year-old is also pretty dang exhausting!  Pretty much life with this busy little buddy is exhausting, but being in a different place, sleeping in a tent, dirt and rocks everywhere, wanting to play with the big kids, all proved to be quite the adventure!  How did my parents do it?  You just do it I guess and then be grateful for the fun memories!

The "kitchen".

We had two campsites right next to each other.  It worked out perfectly!

 

Hudson is still the best and happiest baby on earth.  I'm pretty sure he handled camping better than all the other kiddos.

Waking up from his first night in the tent.  He did pretty great night 1!

The first night went just great.  We put Porter down and he hardly cried at all.  He slept all through the night!  All our poor neighbors didn't know what they had signed up for camping next to us though.  These kiddos are early risers, especially when they are sleeping outside!

 

Love this sleepy morning face!

It wouldn't be camping without chocolate Donettes!

 Early Saturday morning, James, Porter, Ryan, and I went up to Silver Flat Reservoir to determine if it would be a good place to spend the day.  The lake was so low.  It would have been terrible to take the kids too because the water was so far away and there was no shade whatsoever.  On the way back to camp, we hit the jack pot with firewood and found the perfect creek spot about 5 minutes from our campground.  We hurried back to camp and loaded everyone up for a creek day!

The water was ice frigid, but the kids didn't seem to care.

 

 

 

 

Soph was so brave walking across this fallen log!

 

Perfect camping face!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another perfect camping face!!

After spending most of the day at the creek, this kid was in desperate need of a nap... 

We painted rocks while Porter napped.

 

 

And we played a few minute-to-win-it games that Jack organized.  Always hilarious!

 

 

The kids loved climbing all over these huge rocks.

It was an awesome time!  It was great to be out in nature and disconnected from everything.  It was mostly just the best to spend time with family!  The campsite was ok, but it was no Barton Flats...that is for dang sure!  We scoped a potentially better spot for next summer.  I also think we need to go for at least 3-4 nights to make all the packing, setting up, and unpacking worth it.  Porter will be a little older next summer too and less prone to eat dirt, fall every two seconds, and wander into streets....we all hope anyway!!

Oh and this must be documented...I mentioned that Porter did great the first night.  Well, last night was not so great!  He went down great, and I figured he would be out with the extra long and eventful day we'd had.  James had just left for night since he has bishopric meeting at 6am, so it was just me and P solo.  I sat down by the fire with everyone else to soak in the last few hours of our camping weekend, and Porter started screaming.  I didn't want him to annoy the whole campground, so I went to check on him.  It seems like he had just had a bad dream, so I calmed him down and put him back to bed.  I had literally just finished zipping up the tent to head back down to the campfire, when he started screaming again.  I picked him up to find that he was soaking wet.  What the?  How could he have peed out already?  I had just changed his diaper when I put him down a few hours before.  So I rifled through our suitcase to try and find new clothes and a new diaper.  I was trying to keep the flashlights off so Porter wouldn't completely wake up.  Well, that failed, so flashlights were on, he was still crying, and I was trying to change him on a partially blown up air mattress.  I should have filled it before putting Porter down!  By the time I got him all ready for bed again, there was no way he was going to go back to sleep without me in there, so I just threw him into bed with me and called it a night.  He went back to sleep quickly, but sleeping with a 1-year-old on an half full air mattress is no bueno!  He moves around so much!  And he was always falling toward me, kicking me and smacking me all night.  I'm pretty sure he got a good night sleep, but I was happy when it was finally morning!  I was planning to pack up and be to our 8:30am sacrament meeting, but that sure didn't happen.  We made it for the second two hours, and then I went to Amy's sacrament meeting later this afternoon.

Trek

Well, we did it!  We survived trek!  It was truly awesome and once-in-a-lifetime!  I would leave tomorrow to do it again!  We met at the stake center on Monday morning at 7:30am after dropping Porter off at Amy's.  We had a little devotional, and then we were off!

Here was our crew...Emilie, Aleah, and Quinton

We arrived at the trailhead around 10:30am.  After quite a long wait while things were planned and coordinated, we finally got to start on our journey.  We hiked a couple of miles before stopping for lunch.

Here is our family right before heading out - Aleah, Ellie, me, James, Emilie, Quinton, and Roxxi.  Ethan is hiding behind Aleah.

 

Each family was given a baby doll to carry along the way.  It was not allowed to be put in the cart.  Emilie took the first turn carrying our little baby Charles.

At one point along the trail, we stopped for a little devotional.  We were each given a slip of paper.  Each slip said something different.  One of our slips said that our baby had died that day from exposure.  Here are all the babies that didn't make it in our company.

Another one of our slips said that Quinton fell under the wagon and broke his arm, so he could only push with one hand for the rest of the day.

One of the toughest parts of day 1 was Gravel Hill.  It was very steep, and we had to turn the cart around and tie a rope to it so that we could all help get it down the hill safely.  It was pretty intense!  I basically just slid down the whole hill.

 After about 8 miles of trekking, we finally made it to our campsite for the night.  We had to cross over Muddy Creek to get into camp.  That was quite the adventure!  We had a great cooking crew that had dinner ready for us.  We set up camp, ate dinner, and then learned some square dancing.

Nothing wore James and I out more than the square dancing!  Holy smokes!  We were exhausted at the end of the day!

Aleah

Emilie

Quinton square danced with two ladies apparently!

James and I were up bright and early the next morning.  This was the sunrise...

We had an awesome breakfast, and then jazzed up our cart a little with our left over bandanas.  We had a lot of down time until we headed out for the day, so we started getting creative and playing pioneer games and taking naps.

Then we were finally off.  Day 2 was a short trekking day.  We only walked for about 4 miles.

 

 

The women's pull also happened on day 2.  About half way into our trekking for the day, we came to a pretty large hill.  They had all the boys walk ahead up the hill, where they had a little devotional.  They were told to just stand and watch without saying a thing while all the girls pulled the carts up the hill.  All us ladies stayed behind and said a prayer and sang, "As Sisters in Zion".  I was all ready to help my girl push that cart up the hill until they told us that the ma's couldn't help either.  I was pretty bummed and worried that our four girls wouldn't be able to make it.

Being instructed for the women's pull.

James said the hardest part of the whole trek was watching all the girls struggle up the hill and not being able to help.  I think it was quite a powerful experience for everyone.

My girls gettin' it done!

I obviously would not have made a very faithful pioneer because our girl made it up the hill with no problem.  The cart in front of us only had two girls pulling it, and they even made it.  As we came up the hill all the men were standing there silent with their hats off.  The women's pull is done to remember all the women who had to cross the plains alone.  It was a pretty neat experience! 
Shortly after the women's pull, we made it to our campsite for the night.  We had several rounds of tug-of-war and a delicious dinner.

Our friends, the Swensen's, were on the cooking committee.  It was fun to see them at every meal!

That night we had a testimony meeting.  It was cool to hear all the youth bear their testimonies.  When James and I were asked to be a ma and pa for trek, I told James that I wish we could do the trek without the teenagers.  Let's face it, they are pretty annoying most of the time!  But hearing their testimonies and how much this trek experience had taught them made it totally worth it.  Experiences like these are important for youth.  I just had to keep reminding myself of that when they were getting on my nerves!

Testimony meeting

James and I crashed again and were up bright and early the next morning.

He just wanted to see what it was like to wear a bonnet!

We had some time that morning to play some Farkle!

Before we knew it, we were off for another long day of trekking.  The first half of day 3 was a doozy!  It felt like we were going uphill for 4 miles straight.  One of our kids, Ellie, had a sprained her ankle on day 2 and wasn't able to join us for day 3.  Then about a mile into our trek, another kid, Aleah, sprained her ankle and she had to stop too.  So most of day 3 was just James and I and four kids.

All along the trail we would pass grave markers.  Most of them were just piles of rocks, but some had actual markers.  It was humbling to walk the path the pioneers walked.  There were many times I would kind of hang back from our group and take just a few minutes to think about those who had gone before.  We had perfect weather, fancy hiking boots and awesome breathable shirts, chapstick, a water cooler that we could fill at every stop, meals cooked for us, sunscreen, bug spray, etc. and it was still challenging.  It was humbling to think about all the trials and difficulty circumstances those early pioneers went through!

This was our company boss, Bishop Foy.  He kept us on track and organized!

We stopped for lunch at Dibble Rock. 

 

After eating lunch, we gave all our kids letters from their parents.  Everyone spread out and just had a little alone time.  After a while, a sister started playing "Come, Come Ye Saints" on the violin, and we all headed up to a natural amphitheater for a devotional.

 

 

 

We sang, and a few people shared their testimonies, and we got to hear the story of Philo Dibble.  He hid from Johnston's Army in this little amphitheater and while hiding carved his name in the rock.  Then we headed back down to our hand carts and finished the trek.

We were never happier to see our cars all lined up ready for us to head home.  We piled back in the cars and drove the two hours back home.  The cooking committee had hamburgers ready for us back at the stake center and everyone's parents came to get them.  James and I headed home to shower and clean up a bit before going to get Porter.  We were pretty excited to squeeze our little buddy!  At first he just looked at me like, "who in the world are you?!".  It wasn't exactly the reception I was envisioning, but we had woken him up to take him home.  It wasn't long before he couldn't stop saying, "mama, daddy, mama, daddy".  We sure missed him!
Last night we had a final trek fireside.  A few people shared their testimonies and there was a slide show.  It was fun to reunite with our trek family one last time!  It was all experience never to forget!