Monday, August 8, 2016

Happy birthday Dave! Let's go camping!

Dave turned 42 this year. The kids were excited about him turning the answer to the universe! He's not a huge cake fan, so I made him an apple crisp for the family party. 

He had to work on his birthday, so we did presents after he got home. He was able to guess some of them pretty easily. Then we went out to dinner at a new seafood restaurant in town (just the 2 of us for our date), and came home for dessert:

I made him a peach cobbler from peaches I picked earlier that day. 

The next day we drove 4 hours to go camping up in the mountains. It's called Courtright Reservoir, and it's about an hour past Shaver Lake.  Dave, Spencer and Tyler went there for scout camp a couple years ago, and they were excited to show it to the rest of us. 

We had so much fun! We packed our 2-man kayak, swimming stuff, rock-climbing gear, and bikes. 

I took a ton of pictures, so I'll break this up into 3 different blogs. I think. First I'll post pictures from around the campsite. I LOVED our campsite. I just chose it from a simple map online because it looked like it was farthest from the entrance and kind of away from the other sites. I was right! We had tons of privacy.

We were close to bathrooms and water and had woods all around us. There were tons of trees, wildflowers and granite.  

The downside was that there were lots of mosquitos. You can see a big bite on Dallin's forehead. I had to constantly apply bug spray, and that helped.

Spencer took his slackline.

They're all getting pretty good!

It was nice and cool there (a lovely break from our hot weather), and it didn't rain. The boys had rain and hail there 2 years ago, so we were grateful! 

It was very relaxing there! And as an added bonus, we didn't have any cell phone reception. So we were completely cut off from the outside world. That's huge! 

The boys spent a lot of time whittling around the campfire, just like they did at scout camp. 


Camping is so much easier these days with older kids. I don't remember ever being this relaxed while camping!

This is one of our favorite camping meals: cornbread and chili. Easy, filling, and yummy. We put a few briquettes on top of the cornbread lid to help it cook on top without burning the bottom. It worked perfectly.

It was a big campsite! We set up 2 tents, and there was still plenty of room for at least one more.


  It got pretty chilly at night, so the campfire felt lovely.

I'm still learning about my camera - I had fun playing around with different settings. 

We had plenty of down time, which was nice.

 We played telephone around the campfire. Always hilarious.

So much silliness. What a group!
 There aren't many pictures of me, but I took this one with the timer.

Oh wait, I found another one!

Everyone packed their own clothes, but somehow along the line all of Brennan's clothes disappeared from his suitcase. Luckily his church clothes made it. We drove 1 1/2 hours to get to the closest church! 

These two had fun "making" pencils. First Brennan used his pocket knife to form a sharp point. Then Levi burned the ends slightly in the fire so they could write with them. 

 My favorite dutch oven dessert: chocolate cherry cake. Yum!

We worked on several camping requirements for Brennan's Bear badge in Cub Scouts, including a campfire skit.

 All the kids did the skit together. I think it was based on a Studio C skit.

 Chloe's face cracks me up! She played the princess, and she really got into her part!

 See, she even had a crown.


 They found a great path to ride their bikes on.     Dallin flipped backwards right after I took this pic.

 I think Levi took this picture. It was our last day, and we didn't want to leave.

All packed up and ready to go.

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