Camping Queen

Camping with Lydia was it's own unique challenge. She is at the stage where she loves to explore and crawl around. She loves to inspect everything with her hands and mouth. She doesn't want to be held all the time, and she gets tired of her stroller real fast.
Still, I usually managed to keep her off the ground.
Sometimes with table-tops.


(By the way Chris, I hope you don't mind that I let Lydia mouth your water-bottle lid.)
There was the occasional time where I allowed Lydie to sit in the dirt. There was the even frequent time where my mom allowed it. :)
During those times, she found the pine needles, sticks, rocks, bark, and weeds, too much to resist. I guess she figured they must all be delicious. I could barely take a picture of her in the dirt without having to stop and intercept the pine needle headed for her mouth. Or when I was too late, I'd pause my photography so I could remove the bark from her mouth.
Love her.





Right after I took these pictures, I found a HUGE ant tucked snuggly behind her ear. This was not a good year for bugs. There were many. A lot of gigantic, sometimes flying, ants. Spiders galore. Icky.

Chillin' out, maxin', relaxin' all cool...

Ten points to the first person to correctly identify the tv show theme song that the title of this post comes from.

After our turbulent first day camping, we spent Tuesday sleeping in, napping, and relaxing. Didn't do a whole lot else. But it was nice.

Check out my cute, messy baby. She's happy, with a water bottle in one hand, and a cracker in the other.


My parent's bought a couple of these wicked-awesome chairs. So comfortable.





Yes, we love us some relaxin'. What's camping for, eh?m

The start to our family campout

We had our annual Martin family campout. It was originally planned for Monday-Monday, but when Sunday came around, we packed up and left. You don't sleep as well while camping, and after a week of shorted hours, the kids were extra naughty, the parents had less patience, the prospect of being home in our warm beds, taking long showers, and letting kids get a good nights rest, was too tempting to put off for one more day.

Monday was a day of preparation. Packing, laundry, shopping, etc. My folks have a lot of camping gear, things to provide for ease and convenience while you are in the woods. It's great. But it takes a lot of time to gather and prepare. Dad has an trailer for hauling ATV's. It also hauls all the stuff. Mine included. If it weren't for them taking my stuff, I would have had to choose between tents and sleepings, or food and clothes.
So, preparations were taking a lot of time. It was probably around 5:30-6:00 p.m. that I left the house in my car, with my kids, and brother, Casey. We stopped at Cabella's for some ATV plate stickers, and Wendy's for dinner. Then we drove up past Anderson Ranch Reservoir, past Pine, past Featherville, and to Wilson Creek campground. There is a lovely spot there.
We arrived around 10:00. Lydia spent the last hour SCREAMING. I think the pressure changes in the mountains were really hurting her ears.
Chris and his family were already up there, tent up, kids in bed.
I brought my tent, and my parents' tent, so they could be all set up and ready by the time my mom and dad arrived. We set up tents.
I put Morgan to bed, (in his regular clothes) in my brothers' suburban. Lydia had a diaper emergency, so we borrowed clothes from my 2 year old nephew for her to sleep in. I put her to bed in her carseat, in the car.
Chris and Christine went to bed.
Casey and I took to my car. We waited for my folks to arrive. We had a call from them around 9:00, saying they were just leaving.
Casey and I played a game. Lets each guess the time we think they will pull in. The closest wins. I won. I guessed 12:21. They arrived at 2:45.
During our wait, Casey and I tried to sleep in the bucket seats in the car. It was cold. Casey didn't even have his jacket; it was in the trailer. It was uncomfortable. For awhile Casey couldn't even recline his chair because Lydia's seat was behind it. (I eventually moved it for him.)
Morgan was cold and cried out to me. He had a couple little blankets, but it wasn't enough.
If they didn't have all our clothes and blankets and sleeping bags, my parents probably wouldn't have gone up until the morning. As it was, they didn't leave till around 11:30. (That's my dad!) *wink*
When they arrived, they probably weren't greeted with a hero's welcome. Maybe more of an incredulous, grumpy, attitude. But they brought cots, air mattresses, sleeping bags, and blankets.
We slept till 9:00 the next morning. That is unheard of while camping. We even all took naps that day.

More to come. The remaining posts will include pictures.

Ward Campout

A couple weekends ago we went on a ward campout. We drove up with my parents, and even stayed with them in their tent trailer. It was at Camp Ee-De-Haw, or something, near Donnelly. I probably spelt that all wrong. It was on Cascade Lake.
We went up on Thursday, and left Saturday. It wasn't a very warm weekend, and we spent much of it in jackets.
Friday, I sent Morgan with my parents to the ward gathering place. Our camp spot was pretty secluded from the rest of the ward. Anyway, I stayed in the trailer with Lydia until her morning nap was over. We both needed naps, as she cried all night long.
On our way up to everyone else, we met Morgan coming back. He was excited to tell me about going on a boat, his first time, he always wanted to go on a boat. I was bummed I missed it! And no picture to capture it.
Morgan spent most of the time there playing with the other kids, particularly his buddy Jack, who is in his primary class. He had a blast.


The little beach there had a spectacular view of the lake. So pretty. Unfortunately, it wasn't warm enough to get in the water, so Morgan had to settle for playing by it.



Morgan and Jack looking for sharks.





There was a swing set there, so that was fun to play on too.



We went home Saturday, bathed, did laundry, slept. Sunday we rested, enjoyed Fathers Day. Monday we got ready, and went on a huge family campout. Coming soon.

Time for a haircut

Morgan recently-ish got a haircut at the Grandpa barber. He commented that Grandpa was faster than Mommy.


Finished product.


Also, Lydia likes pickles. She makes funny faces every bite she takes, but she keeps taking more bites. Love it.


Morgan has always been a pickle eater.

Finally, outside play

It warmed up, for the most part. So we've been able to play outside. Yay!
Morgan has grown to like toy guns.

Still need to work on his stance. :)

Lydia in her stroller. Just a cute cute baby.

Goggle-face

I'm still playing catch up. I just went on two camping trips, totaling about 1 1/2 weeks of it, and have a bunch of pictures and stories. But I'm still way back in May or something.
These are just some cute photographs.
You can kind of see Lydie's spacey teeth. I think it's adorable. By the way, she grew two more while we were camping. Two more on the top. Now she has 6 teeth.



While teething, Lydia makes a funny scrunchy face and breaths rapidly through her nose. It is so funny. Here is what it looks like.

Morgan has a pair of cheap goggles. They don't actually work to keep all the water out; we've tried them. But they sure do make good photo-ops.