Ward Campout -2012

We couldn’t wait for our two day ward campout, to get out of the heat, and especially to let the girl run around and experience the outdoors. We prepped Anna by telling her how we were going to the mountains and we would sleep in a tent by lots of trees. She was pretty excited. We bought a new family tent since our old one was just too small for all 4 of us. This new tent is awesome and huge, an 8 man tent. The funny thing about tents is a "4 man tent" is really a 2 man tent.
When we first got there all the girls wanted to do is play in the car. We used the back of the car as our table. Kent was awesome and planned all the meals, shopped for the food, and cooked all the meals. Pretty sweet!

Kent made some scrumptious chicken dumplings for the Dutch oven potluck.

Elise, oh dear, had so much fun but she came home looking like a homeless person. She had scrapes and bruises all over her arms and legs, a cut lip and covered in dirt. Silly girl would not stop putting rocks, sticks, and dirt in her mouth. Anna was so excited about finding worms, caterpillars, bugs, neat leaves and rocks.

I took the girls on several bear hunts and they both loved it. Elise kept thinking she saw a bear and would point and say, “grrrr.”  Anna loved going through the long wavy grass, “swishy swashy swishy swashy, and through the thick ozzy mud, “squelch squerch squelch squerch” etc. At the end of the hunt we did run into a big bear in the trees which got us pretty scared, though if you looked close it might resemble a black cow, and the grrrs did sound an awfully lot like mooos, but only if you listened carefully.

We hiked in to see the Tonto Natural bridge which was pretty neat. We carried the girls in the carriers and hiked about a mile in, across boulders and over streams. There were several swimming holes and the girls loved it.

We stopped at a swimming hole and let the girls swim. They loved it.


My favorite part was hanging out with the ward members at the campfire in the evening. Such a fun ward. One night while we were all by the fire a little gnat flew in my ear, like way down in my ear and I couldn’t get it out, and nobody could see it, but I kept hearing buzzing at my ear drum; I was going crazy. The Ironic thing was when I was packing my first aid kit the one thing I took out was my otoscope thinking “why would I ever need this camping.”

We ended the campout with a nice Anna sized hike out to the Mogollon Rim.

And I think we broke our curse this campout; we left 5 minutes before it started raining.