Kody-chrome

We had a great time at the K-basin this year. The weather was WINDY but warm. My sissy, Cyd, and her family came too. Good times!

Noah's birthday present from his cousins. He even caught himself a moth. 

 Cheryl always gets us a nice spot next to the potties and the grass.  

We played some baseball this year which the kids really enjoyed.

Megan had a great time camping this year and I had a great time taking her. 

 There is a big difference when taking a crawler vs. a walker camping!

This was my one and only camping trip of the year.

About 27 weeks along.

We never left Kodachrome this year. There are just so many trails already inside the park.

 This is one of the great trails. 

Angels Palace.

 Taylor was really sweet with Megan. And Megan in turn loves hanging out with her big girl cousins.

Not sure what's happening here. 

Noah is so cool..er..geeky...cool...geeky...

The kids knew where to go for hot chocolate. Cheryl and Ellsworth's camp. :)

Marshmallow roasting on the last night.

Kodachrome by Kyle

The hike was really high up and we had to go really far down. 

We went in a big, dark tunnel.

We saw a pirate cave but no treasure.

I was laying on a log because my legs and feet hurt. And I was tired. This was my favorite part.

I was the first one to get up the mountain. 

Megan liked hiking. But she was crying some times on the way to Kodachrome.

We were standing on a huge rock and it had a pirate cave on it.

We saw frozen dinos but I couldn't really see them but then daddy told me it was a rock that looked like long necks; then I saw them.

Tommy liked this hike. Megan liked the little

 rocks. She would pick them up throw them.

Tommy in the weeds because we didn't want him to eat our food. (at a rest stop)

Lets see, we went hiking and saw the last bowling pin. Remember when we saw the bowling pin by our campground. Daddy told us in a story about giants playing bowling and they didn't knock over the last bowling pin. There were two giants; one got all bowling pins and the other got all of them except one.

We also saw the giants bowling ball.

Grandma and Grandpa were at the same campground. We went inside the tent that they slept in and played Uno. We played with the giant frisbee's that Grandma brought. We went on a hike to see Thorn's (Thor's) Hammer but I didn't see it because we had to go a different way because the trail was blocked.

We earned Junior Ranger badges. First we had to do an activity and guess the animals in a picture and I had to get some garbage and put it in a bag. Then we got our badges and it was really fun and we got some other stuff. We got a pin, some maps. Thats all I got from Kodachrome. And I got my hat.

Fun in the Unitas

We had a wonderful trip to the Unitas two weeks ago. Sure it rained like crazy. Sure it got down to 29 degrees at night, but what could be funner? We made the climb up the mountain for Erin's family reunion at Moon Lake. Before that though, Kyle, Tommy and I had a little "reventure" (Kyle's word for adventure). We backpacked in to Aftan Lake (shown in wide angle) and camped over night.

We made our way up to the lake and stopped short of making it to the lake to set up camp... and not a moment too soon. It started raining as I was throwing the rain fly over our tent. The first hour of our tripped started in a tent taking pictures of each other and telling stories.

After the rain we were able to continue the rest of the way to Aftan. Kyle really enjoyed hanging out with everyone. Taylor, Eric, Paul, Newty, Jack (dog), Amy and Ethan were with us which made for a lot of fun.


I had to share this pic as it is one of the only times Tommy did not look doppy.

After an excellent time at Aftan, we drove to Moon Lake and met up with Noah, Erin and the family reunion. The Bros had a sweet moment together by the lake after being apart for a whole day. They both missed each other. After Kyle and I left to go backpacking Erin said that Noah grabbed a backpack, put two apple sauce packages and two spoons in and kept telling Erin "Go camping".


Us hiking around the lake, just before it started to rain (again).

Of course Noah had his cousins to play with too. Noah and Coleman sat around the campfire for hours swapping man stores and how to survive in the wild and still avoid diaper rash.

Kyle snaps a pic of Will in yet another moment of silliness.

Getting together at the Coggle events usually means a few things. 1. food (the dutch oven cook off rocked) 2. fun (everyone had a great time around the camp fire) and 3. NOISE (everyone likes to create packs and talk over each other).

We had a wonderful time, in spite of the weather. Night one we say was the most wild thunderstorm we have ever experienced. Thunder and lighting rattled off in long streaks seemingly with out a gap to take a breath, as we huddled in our tent praying we would not be fried. Night two the temp dropped to below freezing, but thanks to our lumber jack sleeping bags we did not feel even a slight chill (thanks ma).



After years of complaining about the imperfect process of making s'mores, Erin discovered chocolate covered graham crackers. We quickly found that this new invention revolutionizes the s'more building process. Observe:

{Step 1} Roast Marshmallow: Using a rock as a balance for your roasting stick, position your marshmallow at a distance at which the underside begins to turn gold and the turn until all sides are evenly golden.

{Step 2} Mush: Place the marshmallow between two chocolate covered graham crackers and mush.

{Step 3} Enjoy (Stopping to pose for self portrait mid-bite): Eat the entire thing as quickly as possible so you can have "s'more".

{Repeat}

Notice in this process we were able to eliminate the annoying steps of unwrapping chocolate bar, placing on graham cracker and trying to melt the chocolate bar. Brilliant!!!

As far as Tommy goes, he had a wonderful time. Camping is one of the few times we let him really act like a dog. He ran around free as a bird on a number of hikes and had a great time meeting new people. However there was one unfortunate incident where Tommy pooped out Jack (shown here). The two dogs got tangled up and I think they ended up in positions that neither enjoyed.

Reuniting...it's a good thing.

2009

What a group. 66 souls to be exact. (67 if you count the one in Alicia's belly.) Its been a long while since we had family reunion let alone a camping one. The rain, of course, played a huge roll in everything. We even had to go to a different campground since people were getting stuck on the slippery, muddy, dirt road climbing up to Camp Timberlane. We ended up at Scofield Reservoir which was a great fit. We lucked out.

Hanging out in the middle of the Hind Family dominated road.

The kids did some fun crafts (provided by us, the Richard Hind Family) including hiking staffs, visors, and also a nature scavenger hunt. Mom also did a bingo game where we learned a lot about our ancestors.

Kyle and Samuel

Noah wondered down to the dock by himself...and up to the road...and I felt like a crappy parent. Rocks DO NOT work well as fetch toys for Tommy. Blood. Lots of blood.

Lessons learned.

We only spent one night due to Kyle's soccer game -that he refused to play- that we wanted to attend. The time spent was well worth it though. Looking forward to it next year!

Logan, Hayley and Mary

Ken Hind Family

Grandma and Matt

The rocket- glad we brought it. The kids LOVED it.