Memorial Day Weekend

As time goes by, as a family, we are making our own traditions.

This year, as we have done in the past two years, we went camping. The previous two years we went camping with friends. This year, we went by ourselves.

Just the four of us.
It was really fun.
Arden is really into dinosaurs, almost as much as he is into insects, but not quite.

We decided to go to Dinosaur National Monument/Park.
On our way there, the children were getting a bit bored. To keep them distracted, I took photos of them.

Lots of photos.


I let Arden go at it with our camera.

After getting a speeding ticket, we made to the park.

Picked out the 'perfect' campsite and set up our tent.

It had a really gorgeous landscape.

I was a bit nervous about camping with Maya now that she's at that super mobile age.

To be truthful, at first I didn't want to go. It's too much work packing and unpacking. Being dirty, possibility of Maya wondering off, etc. A couple of mornings before leaving (and I was still undecisive about going), I read an article in the Ensign (a magazine from the LDS church) regarding family memories and it happened to be about camping. The author expressed the same feelings/reasons I felt about camping. At the end of the article she expressed her love for the memories her children were making and the appreciation for nature. It had me convinced...we had to go...for the sake of tradition, experiences, and to create memories.

Newel was super helpful and we tried to pack as simple as possible and ended up with a van full of stuff.

It went pretty well. It went better than I expected.

Maya mostly stayed at our campsite with not too much wondering off.

Arden was ecstatic. He really loves camping. He's in his comfort zone.

That evening, we roasted hot dogs, marshmallows, and made banana boats.

It was pretty relaxing. As I sat by the fire I was taking in all of the smiling and laughter from my children.

The experiences, the memories, the tradition.

It was worth it.

Late in the evening, it started to rain. It rained most of the following day. By 9AM, Maya had gotten all of her pants wet, but she loved playing in the rain while Arden and Newel slept in.

Still, we went on hikes in search of dinosaur bones. We hiked through mud, lots of mud. We got pretty dirty. We found the bones. Arden felt like a real paleontologist.

It was going to continue raining and all of our stuff was wet, so we decided to head back home.

I didn't take any photos of our hikes since I didn't want our dinky little camera to get ruined.

Newel and Arden still had the camping bug in them, so they invited the primas to camp out with them in the backyard. They had loads of fun. Lots of 'scary' stories, banana boats, and tons of playing and giggling.

The following morning, they even went out on a hike. It was a great Memorial Day weekend.