My Day Off

One of the less "required" parts of our trip was camping. It has become traditional (a whole two years' worth so far) to have the Craig & Janet Wampler Posterity Reunion Camping Trip the first weekend of August. Originally, we figured we wouldn't be going. The first thing that changed that plan was Heather choosing Ben's birthday to get married--my family was going to come to Albuquerque to visit us that week, but those plans were cancelled once we learned that we would be in Idaho. So, instead of coming to us, Mom agreed to babysit the kids the next week while we were in Georgia. And since we were then going to be in Salt Lake on the Thursday when the camping trip started and Salt Lake is so much closer to Island Park than Albuquerque is, we thought that just maybe we'd be able to make it.

And so we did.

I will say that probably, this was the highlight of my week. I'll give Heather and Brenda their weddings, I'll give Chris all his excitement in being at GA Tech, I'll give the kids all the fun they had with Grandma Karrie and Amy, but I'm taking camping. What made it so great for me? I didn't have to do anything. Seriously. Such a nice break after all the planning, cleaning, packing, and Georgia stresses.

Aside from sitting around camp together, the only entire group activity was a visit to Upper Mesa Falls, which was about twenty miles from our camp. It was an easy walk, and the view was worth the drive.

Ben didn't really think so, though. He had fallen asleep in the van on the way there and let me tell you, he is a bear when he's woken up before he's ready. Such a grump.

There came a point on Friday afternoon when I found myself alone at the campsite with four of the kids--my three and Charlotte. We kept ourselves nicely entertained. First the kids colored,
 

then they "built" a surprise to show Grandma Janet and Grandpa Craig when they each came back.

Charlotte just watched and laughed most of the time. She especially liked it when Megan talked to her.

The downside to this period of isolation was the fact that the menfolk had taken Craig and Janet's van to go fishing. I had the foresight enough to get Craig to pull out all the food for dinner before he left since I figured we'd want to eat before they actually got back, but we missed the tote that had all the cooking utensils. We had the camp stove and a pan, but no can opener. I improvised.

Good thing we had a pocket knife and a hammer handy.

Michael is the only one to have caught a fish during the trip, though not until after he caught a crawdad.

But from the pictures, it seems that they all had a good time.

Thanks to Chris and the pictures we took from Michael and Amanda's camera, we have lots and lots of shots of the wildlife around camp and on the various hikes.

Of course there are the people on the hikes, too.

Being that this was a Wampler camping outing, you can be sure there were plenty of games played.

And here are pictures of kids in car seats.

And here is a picture of a moose.

When the Parents are Away, the Children will Play

Whilst Chris and I were having all kinds of adventures in Atlanta, the children were, oddly enough, still alive and occupied. Weird how they don't just cease to exist when we're out of town for a few days.

Courtesy of my mother's facebook page, I have record of a few of their exploits while we were gone and they were in the care of said mother. I'm pretty sure these are completely in the wrong order, by the way.

...running in the sprinklers...

...visiting Discovery Gateway on a Girls' Day Out...

This day seemed particularly nicely worked out to me. Audrey, Megan, and Nicole had a girls' day with Grandma Karrie and Deborah, Ben went to play with the twins at Lisa's house, and Dalton had a chance to be the only visitor at his cousin's house. Sounded to me like everyone had a chance to hang out with just their favorite people for a while without the entire crowd. That's a nice change from normal, don't you think? I don't have any pictures of Ben from this day, though I'm sure he had all kinds of fun.

...going to Hogle Zoo...

...recreating history at Silver Lake...

Twice before, Lisa and I have taken all our kids up to Silver Lake and taken a picture of them all together. It's fun to see the change over the years, from then until now. They keep getting bigger, and there keeps being more of them...

2010

2011

2013

Thank you, Mom, Lisa, Deborah, Amy, and everyone else for helping to take care of our kids while we were gone. It made life much easier for us to not worry about them at all for a few days.

To round it out, here are a few more random pictures.

#1: We stopped in Salt Lake and had lunch with my family before continuing on to Idaho for Heather and Brandon's wedding. My apologies to them, especially to my dad, for Utah becoming a pit stop on our way to so many Wampler events. I do sincerely wish we had been able to spend more time with you on all these trips.

My eyes are closed because Mom kept taking forever to actually snap the picture, so we sat and smiled like idiots for a really long time and had no idea when the picture was actually taken. This was the third or fourth attempt and we gave up.

#2: Apparently, Ben was quite upset that Amy left in a separate vehicle after they visited the zoo. This is his grumpy face.

#3: When we finally reappeared after being in Georgia, the kids were only mildly interested in seeing us. No worries--I totally expected that. I was amused, though, when a while later Ben came running into the kitchen, barely glanced at me and said "Hi, Mom," then immediately grabbed Grandma's hand and pulled her into the family room to show her the airplane he had built. He did a good job, I thought. Even though he yelled at me for coming in to see it, too. Ha.