Camping, Lots Of It

For the past 3 weeks I've had camping on the brain. Usually I quite enjoy camping....but whilst preggers, it's a bit of a challenge, to say the least! I desperately wish I could get the nausea under control because it's ruling my life!

Sam and I reserved a camping spot up Little Cottonwood canyon at the beginning of the month. It was GORGEOUS! We did tinfoil dinners one night with my parents and then a weiner roast the next night with our friends, the Colasurdo's. Our camping spot had huge boulders next to it that everyone hiked on to their heart's content. It was perfect!





There were these weird worms/caterpillars hanging from spider webs, from trees. They were everywhere. It was fine once I got used to looking right in front of me, but at first I kept walking right into them! Hork!



This picture makes me laugh! Looks like Mindy and I are giving each other a long distance high five, I honestly have no recollection of this moment!


Something about the mountain air makes my boys more tolerant of each other. It's a good thang!


Climbing boulders and being silly....at least Parker knows what time it is!


I'm super glad our camp spot wasn't next to this rushing river. Totally freaky!!! So many people drowned this spring due to our large melting snow runoff. We could hear the river from our camp, but you had to climb over about 50 boulders to actually see it. Phew!


I came home and slept at night, but Sam and the boys roughed it in the great outdoors. Can you see big blue eyes peeking out at you?


We took a very short break from camping and attended the 4th of July parades in Murray and West Jordan. Our Stake did a float for these parades and the 24th of July parade. It was a lot of work, but so fun to see the end result!

Cameron with his US pride face.


Cameron with his "I have salt water taffy stuck in my mouth" look. He was not pleased. I laughed.


We saw the fighter jets do a fly by:


Here comes our Stake's float! It was the Tabernacle Choir, made up entirely of animals, and the theme is "pressing forward: still singing as we go". It was super fun to cheer them all on!





We had a bunch of youth from our Stake dancing behind the float. This is our favorite babysitter, Paige! She rocks!!


Most of the parade participants gave out candy. A few gave out squirts of water right in your face. Parker learned this the hard way. He was a good sport!


Remember that freaky headless float dude that was left on my lawn? Well, we wanted to give our parade chairpeople a proper "thank you" for all their hard work. I think this worked out just great! I wonder what they thought when they pulled into their driveway to this scene? We love you Matt and Leslie!


On the 6th we headed to the annual Sweet Family Campout. Like I said before, Sam and I were in charge this year. Again, I use that term very loosely. We picked the place. :) Anyway, I was very pleased with the campground: Altamont. It's private, it's huge, and it had flushing toilets. That there is a recipe for a good time!

I was only able to stay about half the time due to the pukes, but the time I was there, I loved!

Lots of photos:























And finally, we attended Bishopric night of Girls Camp last Thursday night. Our camp leaders did an AMAZING job! The theme was "Tangled up with Integrity" and they used a lot of parallels with the movie Tangled. Our camp director has an amazing husband who even built a castle tower and a castle front gate. I was blown away!

If you've seen Tangled, you'll know that there are Wanted posters for Flynn Rider and Flynn always said "They can never get my nose right!" Well, as we were driving up to the campground, we started seeing all these wanted posters with the Bishopric members faces on them. Each and every one of them had a different nose. I was laughing pretty hard! This is only a sampling! There had to be at least 30 of these posters all around the campground!







Around camp:





This is Mike. He was wearing his Fabio wig and trying to give me his best "smolder" look!




Here's Alison. She is a good friend of mine and I'm impressed because this was her 10th year at camp as either a ward leader or a stake leader. This year she was Stake Camp Director! I am in awe of her abilities!


Getting ready for testimony meeting. We have incredible girls in our ward with very strong testimonies. We had the perfect balance of laughing our guts out and feeling the Spirit very strongly. For as long as I live, I will NEVER forget Jenny's "Goonies" testimony. My favorite quote: "...and all it took was Tyson's Chicken Nuggets to bring us back together!" Phew, that was a belly laugh moment for sure!


I wanted to get a cool picture of the glowing lanterns our girls made....but my camera skills leave a lot to be desired. Luckily, I was sitting next to the talented Tania Finn! She grabbed my camera, went crazy on the settings, and got this cool shot!


So, needless to say, I'm all camped out. Good thing too because my boys start school next week! Can you believe that?? Crazy year-round school...