Father/son Campout & Girl's Night

Last night was the father-son ward camp out. We didn't have a tent (as we discovered exactly how many holes it had on the father-daughter camp out last year) so Andy invited his dad to come as he has a brand new, never been used tent. So off Andy, Dan, and Hunter went (we decided to keep Jonathan home, but he will go next year). Hunter was so excited to go camping. All day he kept asking how much longer until they left. And then about 2:30 he asked if he could call dad and grandpa to see if they were on their way. Very cute!!

With the big boys gone, I decided to have a little mother/daughter time with Christiana. So the plan was to put the two babies down for bed a little early and then paint fingernails and watch Bolt which I had rented for the two of us. Well, Jonathan finished dinner so we put him to bed but Jade was still eating, so she joined us for the painting of the nails. Christiana loved all my colors and wanted to do every finger a different color. I finally got her down to picking only 3. Then she picked three new colors for her toes. Jade liked watching us. So, I painted her toes while she was still in her highchair. She LOVED that. It was very fun.

Here is Jade showing off her toes.

We then put Jade to bed and settled down with some popcorn to watch Bolt. It was a very good movie and I recommend it to any age. Then Christiana and I went to bed. It was a fun night, for us. I will let Andy describe his night...

We arrived at the campsite at about 5 and were still one of the first families to arrive. We got out our tent and started to set it up and discovered a problem. . . NO POLES. Now for a dome tent, this is a big issue. Well, we moved our site to under some trees so we could tie the tent to the tree. It wasn't pretty but it stood.

It was then time for dinner. This went off essentially without a hitch (hot dogs are pretty hard to screw up). Then a few of us went for a short hike. While out, Hunter and I saw three deer about 15 feet off of the trail eating. Hunter was very excited but stayed quiet so he wouldn't scare them off. At about 9, we were having a campfire program and Hunter leaned over and asked if he could go to bed yet, so we lost him then. A couple of hours later, my dad and I also retired to our makeshift shelter.

We had been asleep about an hour when it started to rain. Since our tent was not pitched the way it was intended, the rain fly did not fit as intended and some adjustments had to be made. We got it basically watertight and noticed another problem. As the tent was being suspended from trees in four places, the space between the ropes sagged and created a bowl-like effect. That apparently was watertight and every few minutes had to be emptied in order to keep us from getting drenched.

So, after a few hours of light sleep broken by periodic need to drain our roof, I woke up to the feeling of cold feet. I looked around for a while and finally determined that the constant up-and-down motion of the roof had caused the rain fly to shift. My feet were in the rain. We fixed the fly again and then noticed that there was a small lake inside the tent. The only one of us that was dry was Hunter, but, in the few minutes that it took to fix the cause of the problem, Hunter's sleeping bag got very wet. We decided to call it a night and so, at 3 AM we broke camp and took everything to the car in the middle of a downpour. Interesting fact, Oxbow locks their gates and you can't get out in the middle of the night. We slept the rest of the night in the car and then left at 6:30 when the gates opened. We went to Elmer's for breakfast, and they even let us eat right in front of their fireplace so we could dry out while we ate.

As always with a situation like this, it feels really good to be dry now. Still, it could have been much worse and I think we all had a great time (up until about 3 anyway). (Speaking of being dry, I won't even mention having to change my brakes in the rain yesterday after getting home.)

So after they got home (and before Andy changed the brakes) this is what I found.

This is now 0-2 on staying dry on Father/child camp outs in this ward, but amazingly enough he is up for the father/daughter camp out whenever that ends up. We LOVE our daddy!!!