The Wonderful Ward Campout

Friday night we had the chance to attend our ward campout. After much debate over whether or not the impending freezy-ness would be worth the high levels of fun we were sure to have, we packed up and headed out.

Here are some random photos of our fun time.

Here's Ryan setting up the tent. Do you love the action shot of him tossing the bag? Pretty cool! Anyway... after we got the tent all pitched, we couldn't find our rain fly anywhere. Instantly I panicked. I knew it was going to be freezy-freezy and the lack of privacy was a bit concerning too. Ryan told me that he remembered packing up the rain fly in a different box. What? After a heated discussion about what a bad decision it was to pack the rain fly SEPARATELY from the tent, Ryan decided to head back home and grab it. I wasn't keen on the idea of him having to drive another 2 hours just to get the stinkin' rain fly so I suggested we use the tarp and Jimmy-rig it up. So in a feat of amazingness, I pulled the tarp out from under our already-pitched, already staked-down tent. TADA! Guess what I found? The rain fly! Crisis averted.

Here's Audrey with her daddy. This picture is so cute because it's kinda hard to tell who's having more fun!

Here are my three beautiful girls. So here's the eternal struggle with kids and camping. I never want to bring nice clothes because they completely destroy them while we're camping, so I always bring the old, stained up, too small, out of style stuff. But then all of our pictures look like this. Oh well... I guess looking this lovely is just part of the fun.

The girls discovered these delightful little red berries all over the campground. It didn't take them long to figure out that toasting said berries, created a nice red goo. They spent most of the evening with berries on sticks, roasting them in the fire and 'making jam'.

Even Audrey got in on the jam-making fun! And yes... I did let me 2-year-old play in the fire! But I was right there keeping her very well supervised. When you're a kid, sticking sticks in a roaring fire is what camping is all about.

Don't have a marshmallow to roast? Berries will do just fine!

Here's mom & Audrey. She was way too excited about the 2 rivers that ran on either side of the campground.

Here we are sitting around the campfire. I really wish we had gotten a picture of the whole family together. Darn it!

This is our bishop. He & Ryan were able to entertain a dozen kids with a single Frisbee for quite some time. And all this while holding his 1-year-old daughter. Thanks Bishop!

The blur as Audrey runs by. Frisbee sure is fun!

Khursten was absolutely horrified when a man in our ward lit his marshmallows on fire on purpose! She just couldn't understand why someone would choose to destroy such a wonderful thing.

If 2 is good, 4 is better!

A kids' paradise!

Here we all are warming ourselves up by the fire. It was sooooooo cold. I double jammied, double sleeping bagged, and double blanketed the girls at night. I don't know why I didn't do the same for myself. I sat there shivering all night until 3:30 in the morning when I finally dragged Audrey inside my sleeping bag with me to use as my own personal space-heater. Thanks Audrey. When we woke up in the morning, all of our water was frozen. That may have been just a little too cold for me.

Here's my attempt at being artistic. I really wanted to get a campfire picture without the flash. It didn't work out as well as I'd hope because a lot of movement occurred between the 2 seconds that it took for my shutter to open and close. Here's Khursten's best attempt at holding perfectly still for me.

Thanks to everyone who put this together. We sure had a lot of fun!