Ward campout

Our ward scheduled the ward campout a little late this year. Yes, my husband is the Bishop, but I hear it was sort of a last minute thing that was planned with other leaders of the ward so we had to take the weekend that was available. We went this past weekend to Aspen Meadows up above Kamas. The weather has gotten so much colder here over the last few weeks so we knew it would be cold. The weather forecast last week called for rain all week. Well, it didn't rain too much so we thought we would be ok. Ha!
We were up at Marty's parents house Friday afternoon while Marty worked. We had a few rain showers as we were driving up, but nothing horrible. Around 4:30 pm, the clouds came in and it started to downpour. The skies were grey and there was no sign of blue skies anywhere. We decided to head up the mountain to see if anyone was there yet. We found many people had already arrived. They were huddled under canopies and wearing ponchos.
We had packed ponchos for us, but didn't have any kid ponchos. Fortunately, the Pope's in our ward had several extra kid ponchos and loaned us two.
It was fun for the girls (at first).
But after awhile they wanted to take them off and get dry.
There was a little mishap with the scheduler for this camp. We scheduled and paid to use the property, but the stake that owns the property also scheduled a service project. The scheduler thought we were all from the same stake so allowed the overlap. The other stake were doing their service project on the pavilion so they got the pavilion most of the time, but fortunately they let us come down for dinner and share it with them. We basically took it over though. We had so many more people than them. We had a great turnout. Some people stayed home, but most at least came up for the dinner and program. We thought about going down to Kamas to sleep at grandma and grandpa's house, but the girls really wanted to sleep in a tent.
The rain had stopped after the program so we hiked up the mountain to our camping location. We didn't come prepared though when we went down for dinner. We didn't have any flashlights. So we hiked up one extremely wet, muddy trail. Marty had Eliza and I had Brooklyn. Marty was walking in front of me when he failed to mention there were these big step-type things on the trail. I ran right into one and fell down in the mud with Brooklyn following me. Needless to say, we both weren't very happy. Once we made it to the top, we got out our lantern and set up our tent in the dark.
The girls were ecstatic to sleep in the tent. In fact, when the tent was finally up Eliza exclaimed "Nice!" I believe this is her first experience with camping.
The girls were plenty warm and dry. Brooklyn slept the best out of everyone.
Eliza kept rolling around and falling out of her sleeping bag. I was the lucky one to sleep next to the girls so I kept waking up and putting her back in. Between the snorers, the heavy, heavy rainfall during the night, and my girls I barely slept at all. It was the longest. night. ever.
The girls woke up chipper and excited! I'm pretty sure they woke up everyone around us. They got hot chocolate with breakfast and were in heaven to be outdoors. We were glad the rain finally stopped.
Eliza wanted a turn roasting a marshmallow.
After breakfast, Brooklyn joined the group for a scavenger hunt. I didn't really see her for awhile after this. She enjoyed playing with her friends.
Eliza tried her turn at the scavenger hunt, but got bored pretty fast.
Then she had to show me the mud. I thought this picture was perfect! We now refer to this camping trip as "mud camp".
Then it was time to take everything down. Was it really worth all the effort for one night? Maybe ask me in a few more weeks. :)
It took us 4 hours when we got home to de-mud everything. We had to clean the truck (inside and outside), the clothes and blankets, the tent, some camping gear and ourselves. Eliza crashed for those 4 hours and had a great nap. Lucky girl!