It was a whirlwind week that Jason and I are both glad to have over. I was just checking out my planner (yes, I still use a paper one that I actually write on in pencil) for this week and noticed the sea of scribbles from last week’s row and the relatively large amount of blank spaces showing up in this week’s row. How does this happen? At any rate, I am looking forward to a good week and in supporting Jason who sounds like he just remembered that he has some “extra meetings”. I didn’t think it was possible for him to fit in any more, but apparently there was. No complaints (well, only briefly and occasionally). We are thankful for his job and thankful that he has only been to Asia twice this year.
Jason and the kids helped me have a special day turning 33 on Monday. Jason got up and made breakfast, then headed off to work and I enjoyed saying “No” to my garden weeds and my to-do list in lieu of playing plastic animals on the floor with the kids…….throwing in some trucks for Jantzen’s sake. We went to the pool in the afternoon and really had fun running into some good friends we hadn’t seen for a while. A thunderstorm pushed us home early, but Jantzen got his nap in, which meant I did too. Then, my sweet husband called and asked what he could bring home for dinner so I didn’t have to cook! Awesome! We enjoyed Nordy’s BBQ and had a great family home evening together. Thanks to everyone for your calls and cards and beautiful renditions of “Happy Birthday”! It was a great day!
The rest of the week heated up with Enrichment Night on Thursday night and all of my committee except one having to bail out for various reasons. Augh! We pulled it off and it was a great success……just wish we would’ve seen more sisters come. I guess that’s always how it is. I learned some great tips on how to be a better gardener myself and also how to give a better haircut at home. I picked up some recipes for homemade, natural cleaners and homemade beauty products. Very interesting. I got some good ideas on budgeting and teaching the kids about managing money. Thanks to some really sweet sisters, I didn’t end up being there until midnight cleaning up……only about 10pm. The girls were awesome and such a great help. They came to be the models for the haircutting demos and I put them to work before and after. Jantzen stayed home to mow the lawn with Daddy and help him with his teleconferences. They are all such good kids!
Jason was very busy with work……putting out fires and solving problems and attending endless meetings and creating endless slide shows. He is really fantastic! Despite the craziness of that, we still managed to attend a local Gymkhana (horse events show) where Ashtyn had taken lessons this spring. Ashtyn said….it’s a lot more fun when you’re, you know, riding the horse instead of just watching! Hopefully we can get her in for a couple more lessons before school starts. Alyssa would like to try too. Why not?
Since Jason and I both like to see how much we can possibly do in a given amount of time, we ended the week by heading out Friday afternoon and going camping up the Poudre Canyon at Chambers Lake. Estes Park is closer but all of the campsites were booked. It took about two hours to get there, and that was long enough. There is something so relaxing about being up in the mountains and the cool, fresh air, and the quiet. The kids were so excited and we were too. We began unpacking the car and getting the tent set up…….you know the highlight of any camping trip is playing around in and getting to sleep in the family tent. Ours is pretty cool too….nice and big and sturdy. Tents, we have found over the years, work best when used with the accompanying set of poles. Otherwise you just end up with a parachute-type thing on the ground. We made the interesting discovery that our tent poles were not with our tent when we were ready to set it up. Hmmm…. Jason was pretty ticked, considering the last time we used it we had lent it to the Girl’s Camp last summer. He went to go find a solution, interesting, considering that we were about two hours from anything at all. Wishing we had found a campsite in Estes Park because at least they have stores around where you could be grateful to buy an extremely overpriced family tent! I tried to remain calm, lest the kiddies become upset. They were enjoying themselves to the hilt in the dirt and the trees, trying to play soccer on the very hilly peninsula were our campsite was situated. Long story short – Jason drove about 20 miles down the canyon, stopping at four small establishments until he finally found a cheap-o 3-man tent at a non-cheap-o price and bought it and brought it back. Good thing, too, because the kids were getting hungry and he had all of the supplies in the van! He had calmed considerably and we set up the very small tent and got to cooking our hot dogs over the campfire. We also tried some of those Mountain House freeze-dried meals. Pretty good. Great for 72-hour kits. We would’ve enjoyed S’mores too (the kid’s other large excitement about camping next to sleeping in the big family tent all together!); I just happened to forget the Hershey’s chocolate…interesting as it was sitting right next to the marshmallows and graham crackers on the pantry shelf. I picked some m&m’s out of the trail mix to try to imitate the taste, but it didn’t quite cut it. The kids wouldn’t try my m&m trick but seemed to bounce back pretty quickly and enjoyed toasting their marshmallows and watching the Styrofoam plates curl up in the fire. Oh yeah, and then I burned my hand on the roasting stick. Great! We walked down to the lake’s edge to try some fishing with real live WORMS for bait. Jason helped Ashtyn and Alyssa with the fishing bit and I tried to keep Jantzen from throwing TOO many rocks their way (I was not very successful at that. They just make such a fantastic splash, mommy!) and from getting TOO terribly wet and muddy (I wasn’t very successful at that either). Not a bite, but we had a great time just being together. Sleep was interesting that night. Jantzen had had a very short nap so we thought we were in luck, but not so. He was so excited about his first camping trip that he could not and WOULD not fall asleep! Daddy worked most patiently with him for a long, long, long, long, long, long time until I heard Daddy falling asleep to the Primary songs he was trying to sing. Eventually it sounded like Jantzen was out too (about 11:30) so I ducked out of the tent to check. They were all snuggled up in Daddy’s good sleeping bag and the big fleece blanket on the air mattress, out under the stars. It was precious. The girls and I shared the bitty tent (3-man, my eye!) with Alyssa and I on the other air mattress and Ashtyn in the space between the mattress and the tent. I gave her 5 bucks for that! There was no way this pregnant belly was sleeping on the ground in that teeny space….no matter how well I tried to pad it with towels and one small blanket! We were blessed with no one waking up crying in the middle of the night or needing to go potty, although I can’t say our neighboring campers were as lucky! Unfortunately, they had to trek by our camp to get to the bathroom, and unfortunately some kid’s crying really echoed through those pine trees and across the peninsula!
In the morning, Ashtyn peeked her head out of the tent. “Mommy, it is so pretty!” she said. “Daddy said the best time to catch the fish is in the morning!” So she got him up and they went down to the lake for about an hour. She got really good at casting, but no luck with the fishes yet. I stuck around the campsite as Jantz and Lyssie were still sleeping. I thought I’d make myself a nice campfire and some hot chocolate and write in my journal……enjoying the peace of the brisk morning. Well, I couldn’t get the fire started and was feeling pretty pathetic as a camper until Jason tried later and had great difficulty as well. We’re guessing that things were all a bit damp. Or maybe it was just the luck of the camping trip, or lack of it! I did manage the little backpacking stove and had my hot chocolate, then Alyssa and Jantzen both enjoyed some upon their waking up. I wish I had Jantzen’s face on camera………he sat up on the air mattress and took a good look around with a face that said…….”What in the world is going on here…..and where is here anyway?” I had to reassure him some before he would get out of his blankets. We tried the Mountain House eggs and bacon….a bit on the spongy side……and decided that it was just as easy to do fresh eggs and bacon the skillet for camping and that we would save the others for our 72-hour kit! We walked with the kids to the little playground and to try the fish on the other side of the peninsula, stopping so that Jantzen could attempt to chase the chipmunks and touch every tree, saying “tree”. He is talking so much more all of the time. I forgot to bring the water shoes that I had packed for everyone and the sunscreen, but we managed and didn’t stay overly long so as to not get too sunburned. The fish weren’t any better at biting, but we enjoyed throwing rocks and dipping our feet in the cold water. We even got to watch a lab fetching a stick and thought what a perfect end to that perfect camping trip it would be to stop and get a puppy on the way home! We laughed because, of course, to the kids it WAS a great idea and it HAD been a perfect camping trip. That was all that really mattered. We made the best of it and ended up having a great time despite some setbacks. We packed it up around noon and headed down the mountain into the heat! The worst part about camping is having to clean up at home. We may try another weekend after Ashtyn starts school. By the way, we DID find the tent poles in the shed in their separate bag, so at least it wasn’t a loss. Here are two good lines from the trip:
Dad: Ashtyn, be careful there not to touch your pole to the water.
Ashtyn: Why?
Dad: It hurts the pole.
Pause….
Ashtyn: Dad, the pole’s not alive.
Later -
Ashtyn: Alyssa, you’re doing it wrong.
Alyssa: I am not! I am watching my bobber and waiting for it to go down in the water like Dad said.
Ashtyn: Where is your bobber?
Pause……
Alyssa: I don’t know!
One of the best photos would’ve been of Jantzen holding the fishing pole (in nothing but his onesie, mind you, as he was a muddy, wet mess) very intently turning the reel just right, except that the end of the pole Is exactly in the wrong direction – in the dirt on the shore instead of in the water! It was hilarious, but we were out of battery power in the camera. A nice touch we discovered right after we discovered the tent poles missing! Luckily the camera fared better and held out for us until the next morning and we were able to get some good shots for the memoirs!
It was a good time and I think we are rested up now after a busy Sunday morning of doing a musical number and both of us teaching classes. Jason let me nap and we enjoyed playing in the backyard with the kids. Here’s wishing a good week to everyone!
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