Camping in the Sun

This post is just a little delayed because I had seemed to misplace the camera after our camping trip. I finally asked Justin about it tonight and we realized it was most likely in one of the pockets inside our tent. My dear husband unrolled the tent, fished around for the camera, and then rolled it all back up again! And now I can stop looking for the camera, but keep looking for my scriptures which seem to have gone missing.
  We headed up to Palo Duro for another fun weekend camping. It was HOT. 100 degrees hot. We held the boys off as long as we could while we got a few things unloaded, but then we headed straight for the water. We were so glad there was still water in the little stream. We purposefully picked the same campsite just for this purpose.

Matthew and Henry had a great time playing in the water together.

 The animals here are crazy. Last time we had a whole flock of turkeys come through camp and this time there were deer that kept wandering around. They would come right through camp and walk towards you. Greg even got one of them to eat out of his hand...really! You ever seen a wild deer do that? They are obviously use to people.

Matthew could hardly wait to hike over to the cowboy house again. One of his highlights. He has been pretending to be a cowboy all day. He always emphasizes that the cowboys lived a long time ago.

We got to bust out our new tent! It is so huge. It feels like walking into a mansion after crouching down in our small tent before. I love that we can stand up in it, we have more space than we know what to do with, and it has a hinged door that is pretty awesome. Hopefully no more broken zippers for us. 

 Our tent got broken in with a pretty good wind storm, thunder, lightning...but no rain. And--Matthew puked. We are pretty sure he just got overheated and eating a few too many marshmallows didn't help either. He of course managed to get puke on every single blanket and sleeping bag except one, and what Koyle was in. Luckily it was very warm and so it wasn't a problem that we slept the whole night with no blankets (or pillows because we had forgotten those). 

 Saturday morning we went on a hike that turned out to be a really fun adventure. This was the cliffside that backed right up to our campsite.

 A little family photo! There was some great scenery along the way; it was pretty neat to be hiking among these rock structures.

Two thumbs up for me. This is the "trail" that I carried Koyle up and down. And I don't mean carried in a hiking backpack, I mean carried on my hip. He was in little boy heaven the whole time. Koyle has been in love with "walks" lately so this was perfect for him. 

 The view from the top. This was also the highlight of the trip for Matthew. Him and Lily took off up the mountainside and Justin could hardly keep up with them.

 You can't see our faces here but it was cool to stand under the rock. One of our friends got a picture of Matthew and Justin out on top of this rock. If I can locate a copy I will post it because it is pretty neat.

Not pictured is our games of horseshoes. Justin lost, I won. Go figure! More cooling off in the water, lots and lots of good food, bugs bugs bugs, Matthew getting stung by a bee which was pretty dramatic for him, and good old sitting around in camping chairs enjoying great company (we went with the Holmes and Meyets). Also lots of laundry afterwards due to the throw ups. But I will say that unlike last time we went camping, Matthew had no potty accidents! Yeah!