Over the River and Through the Woods...

to the Uinta's we go! We LOVE summer, but it has flown by way too fast! We haven't yet accomplished half of our list of must-do activities this summer! One thing on the list was to take the kids camping. So, we decided this weekend we were going camping. We loaded up the Blazer on Friday afternoon and headed out to the mountains with the Wells family and the Jorgensen family to enjoy an adventurous weekend. It was absolutely GORGEOUS! The photo above was the view as I entered the clearing through the trees, about 20 steps from our campsite. As we sat around the fire in front of our tents enjoying hot dogs (yes, hot dogs! I HATE hot dogs, but around a campfire for some reason they are totally acceptable!) and s'mores (also only acceptable around a campfire :), we all wondered why we don't do this more often. Our kids (and dog) were in heaven! Our answer came when we had to pack up and go home - although it really wasn't that bad, I would definitely go again! I didn't take a ton of pictures with my camera since it really doesn't capture the beauty of nature, and I forgot to bring my nice digital SLR (for some reason I NEVER remember to bring it!), so I took most of the really good pictures with Jake and Laura's awesome Nikon - I will post those when I get them from Laura. Here is just a glimpse of our fun weekend excursion:

Monty LOVED camping! He spent the whole trip jumping in lakes to catch sticks (and fish), trying to swim (typically boxers can't swim, their chests are too big. Matt almost had to jump in and save him when he jumped into too-deep water!), and sniffing every tree, bush, and rock he came across.

McKinley LOVES wildflowers! She had fun picking a few, but we did have to remind her that if she picked too many there wouldn't be any for the everyone else to look at.

McKinley and Mason ready for and adventure - and conjuring up some sort of trouble!

In the 7 years that I have known Matt, I have NEVER seen this vest! I had no idea that Matt was a 'fisherman!' Although he didn't catch anything (there wasn't much to be caught), it was quite entertaining for the kids (and me) to watch him fish. The lakes were beautiful!

The family around the campfire. I don't really know what Matt was doing, but this is the only family photo from the trip that I have for now. :) Everyone made fun of my fold-up camping 'end-table,' but it came in pretty handy for the kids to eat at!
Matt and Mason hiking up to Cliff Lake for a day of rock climbing
Ryan and London checking out Cliff Lake - could you imagine anything more amazing? The pictures just don't do it justice, it was incredible!
I think the altitude (10,000 feet above sea level) was getting to McKinley, she was acting a little crazy! Okay, that's not anything out of the ordinary!McKinley rock climbing with a little encouragement from Matt

It wouldn't be an 'M and M' outing without some sort of mishap. :) Jumper cables - check. First aid kits - check. Water, wool blankets, wool socks, insect repellant - check, check, check, and check. It was FREEZING once the sun went down up in the Uinta's. Luckily, I had brought the kids' snowcoats that I had bought at the end of last winter (they had worn them maybe two or three times before, I bought them a size big so that they would last an extra year, so they would easily fit through this winter and possibly the next). On Saturday we set out on our hike to the rock-climbing routes earlier in the morning, when it was still pretty cold. By the time we reached the top it was sunny and warm. We hung our coats on a tree at the bottom of the final ascent to the rock-climbing routes, then continued on. After a day of climbing we were all pretty tired, so we hiked back the same way we came and headed back to the campsite to pack up the tent and head home. We realized about an hour into the drive home that we had left the coats on the tree in the top of the hike (we all walked right by and didn't even notice 3 brightly colored coats on a tree branch). Too late to go back. Oooops, I guess we are buying new snowcoats again! On the way home we stopped with the Wells to top off our fun weekend with amazingly delicious shakes at Granny's in Heber. All-in-all, another AWESOME summer weekend! Thanks Wells and Jogensen families for making this weekend so much fun - and memorable! We definitely need to do this again!