Camping

May 22-23, 2010

Our friends were going camping for the weekend and they invited us! Steve didn't think I could hack it, and honestly I wasn't sure if I could either. Wilderness, tent, no bathrooms/showers, 2 kids-1 crawling and 1 boy-enough said, and barely any cell phone service. I wanted to go to hang out with friends, but I also wanted to go to prove Steve wrong. I did take 4 desserts for comfort food, which I would have eaten more of if it wasn't so windy. We couldn't go Friday because of work, but we left Saturday morning and started driving the 2 hours to "mountains & Christmas trees" in Arizona. We did get lost! We laughed about it which is unusual for me when it comes to communicating on directions! We finally found it! Our tent was set up for us and all the work was pretty much done. We have great timing! The girls went on a rhino ride...Nichole, me, Jamie, Andrea

While we were bumping along, I watched Nichole roll right over this snake and I started freaking out because it was on my side-front right-and I was hoping it wouldn't strike. I rode the rest of the ride with my feet up and hoping our tent was zipped tightly shut!

Joe absolutely LOVED playing outside the whole time, getting dirty and wearing his fireman boots, thanks Kena!

The guys built a huge campfire pit with the help of the kids.

We found a lizard and Steve tried to get Joe to hold it with no luck, but Cole fell in love with Lizzy and was so sad to have to let her go!

True Jurca here...mother this gun is a red ryder gun

Joe and dad shooting the real thing

The guys going to look for elk
So the pictures look like we had a great time, which we did, but here were some of the funny-only Jen-stories...well there was the snake. Then I went back to the tent to feed Lynden and while moving around on the aerobed that was losing air because it had a hole in it, my knee popped out of place and Steve couldn't move because the aerobed would drop me into the ground when he got up and my knee would pop up...horrible feeling and so we had to let Joe get out of the tent and try to get Lynden to Steve and finish feeding her. My knee popped out once the week before and it took between 1 and 2 hours to slide back into place. I had a mini anxiety attack because I was in the wilderness with no cell service and I felt bad that our friends probably thought we were being rude just hanging out in the warm tent. I tried to be brave and just kick my knee back into place, did not work. It tightened even more. After about 40 minutes I got it back to normal and was freaking out about walking on uneven ground in case it gave again. Then I had to pee and I asked Nichole what to bury/cover/whatever you do in the wilderness. I guess she said cover it with a pine needle and I wasn't thinking and grabbed a pinecone, a thorn from the pinecone went right into my thumb! Sweet, 3 great experiences in about an hours time! Shooting was fun, dinner was fun, and hanging out was great. Joe opted out of dinner which was hot dogs and hamburgers and at 6:15 in the morning was throwing up water all over our sleeping bag and aerobed, probably because he was starving. That just added to Lynden wanting to cuddle most of the night because it was cold, so Steve, me, Joe and Lynden slept together on a flat, queen sized aerobed. We decided to end the hap-hap-happy camping trip without breakfast and get on the road. Once we got some cereal in Joe's belly, he was right back to normal. We really did have a fun time, I just think "I" didn't have the best of luck this time. Hopefully we will try again one day, but only with a group of friends, not by ourselves!