Only this year, we added to the clan by having our best friends from Vegas, The Araves (that now live in Utah), AND my dad/grampa (from Connecticut) join us for our trip. My brother and his wife came up again, but my sis and her hubby had another committment on his side of the family. (We definitely missed them though!)
We planned to leave on Saturday morning, so Brian, Kris, and my dad drove up on Friday night. My dad acutally flew in to UT on Wednesday, but drove up with Bri and Kris and surprised my girls. It was awesome!
So Saturday morning came around and we got everything packed up. While we packed the car, this is what Grampa did with Mitchell.
We were finally ready to go about 11am. Ammon and Shanae (our friends) had their trailer with them, and as we were ready to pull out of the garage, our brand new Odyssey....DEAD!! Won't even turn over. Ok, it's still ok, we jump the car and we are on our way.
The ride up there goes smoothly. We reserved 2 camp sites at Sugarloaf on Lake Cascade. We get there, not a moment too soon for the dear ol' mom who is sitting in the back of the car with two little girls, each laying their heads on my shoulders, only to find someone in our campsite! Matt is fuming that someone would take our site when he had the reservation right in his hand!!! He was ready to get out of the car and tell them that they were in the wrong site and they needed to pack up and move when he asked what the date was. May 23rd, Matt. WHAT!!! He thought it was May 30th and set the reservation for May 30-June 1st. Oh boy, was the momma fuming mad now. It was memorial day weekend. The biggest camping weekend of the summer and we didnt' have a spot. The Araves came up from UT, The Logies from SLC and grampa all the way from CT and we didn't have a camping spot!!! UGH! Good thing that little kids have NO idea what is happening in an adults world!
Ok, calm down Jilene. It was going to be ok. Matt talks to the Camp Host and finds out that there are some sites unreserved and we were welcome to find one. Lucky for us, there were 2 camping spots next to each other that we quickly snagged. Thank the heavens because Matt was about to be a lonely bachelor!!! (just kidding!)
BUT, the site is pretty open and there is no firewood, so we send the guys off to cut down some trees. They did a great job and got back to set up camp. 
In the meantime, we meet our new friend Janet from Nampa, ID. 
Then we decided that grampa and the girls will take the kids down to the lake to go swimming. It was a beautiful day!
Camp is set up, dinner is started and all is well.
Not too long after we finish dinner, in roll the dark clouds.
Ok, just a quick wind storm and it will pass. All the hard work in set up, now needed to come down. 
*sigh* It was going to be ok. We huddled in the trailer and made up stories and played games with the kids while the wind storm and sprinkles passed. Of course, the men had to "tough" it out and stand around the fire that was extinguising rapidly while we took care of all 6 kids! Typical.
Rain slows, we get the fire started again, start the smores (YUM!)
and bam. It starts raining. Great, it's like 9pm. You really think I'm tired enough to go to bed. Let alone in a tent, on the ground while it's raining? Yeah, not fun. BUT..it was a better alternative than sitting in the rain, so off to bed we went. Madeline on one side Lauren not only on the other side, but in my sleeping bag with me!!!
Ah, it was going to be a F-U-N night.
Drip, drip, drip. Gosh dang it! The tent is leaking. Now I KNEW it was going to be a really long night. Mitchell starts crying, so Matt gets him out of the pack n play and we all snuggle onto the queen size air mattress and is slowly leaking to the ground. (Don't ever try to fit 5 people on a queen size air mattress!) Drip, drip, drip. It's REALLY coming down now and we are getting wet. Ok, I succumbed to the fact that I wasn't going to sleep that night. We said a little prayer to help the rain to stop, and shortly after, the rain let up. I began to think it really was going to stop, but not more than 10 minutes later, here it came again. Needless to say, it was a very long cold, wet night!!
Morning came and it was wet, but it wasn't raining. My kids woke up at 6:20am, lucky me. I think it had a total of 1 hour of sleep, so I took them to the car to watch a movie and try to warm up. They fell back to sleep and so did I.
Breakfast time!!! I was excited for pancakes and bacon over the open campfire.
We burned a few 
used the bacon grease for "pam spray", started a grease fire, burned the bacon
and in the end it turned out great!
Mitchell slept through most of it, with all the comforts of home.
Hopefully today was going to be a better day.
Hiking was in the picture and my dad found this great trail he wanted to try out, only it was closed to the public untile May 31st. Do you think that stopped him? Nope. We were told the roads would be like ice cream, but good ol dad said that until we had to turn around, we would keep going. So up, up, up we went. All the way to the top of a mountain. We eventually found the trail. It was buried in SNOW!
It was colder than we anticipated when we set out for our hike in shorts and T-shirts. We now needed snowpants and snowboots. As scared as I was climbing up to the top of the mountain (we were in the car) the views were absolutely breathtaking!!
And who else can say they played in the snow at the end of May?!!
Maddie threw a snowball at Grampa and Grampa couldn't resist getting back at her!
Sunday afternoon brought us some fabulouso Hot Springs that were very relaxing and enjoyable. 
I definitely needed it after the night I had the night before. It was amazing. Yeah for Gold Forks Hot Springs. I think we all had a great time there!
Gourmet dinner was served that night as Matt cooked us some bbq beef sandwiches in the dutch oven and we topped it off with some dutch oven apple pie cobbler. Oh, it was good.
That nights sleep went much better.
While we cleaned up camp and got ready to go home, Grampa did what Grampa's do best.
I suppose he's served his camping days! (acutally, it was a HUGE help to have him holding Mitchell. It kept Mitch clean and safe! Thanks Dad!
A good time was had by all. It started out a little rough, but ended up a success. This is a yearly tradition for us and we always have a great time and come home with great stories to tell. If you want to join us next year, we would love to have you come with us. This time we will make sure to check the calendar....
THANK YOU FOR A FABULOUS TRIP MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS!!!
1 comment:
Great times!
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