Camping

Recently, Brent's work has asked him and other employees to use some of their vacation time. His boss doesn't want everyone taking all of Christmas off so they need to take some time off. Brent decided to take this week off so we could go camping, finally! If you know our family, you know we go camping atleast twice a month during the summer. And because we've needed all our Saturdays to work on the yard, we haven't gone camping yet. So we finally packed up and drove up past Pineview. I had never gone camping up there but Brent used to go with his family all the time. He even had this specific spot picked out right next to a stream. When we finally got up there, the place Brent had chosen was taken so we kept driving around looking for a good spot. Needless to say, we found a great spot that was a little farther up and had the stream right next to our campsite (which Ayden LOVED). So we started setting up. It was so nice to finally be outdoors enjoying the scenery.

So I'm a pretty paranoid person, by nature. And that night I was more paranoid than usual about stuff like bears and snakes and such. I was sitting in the tent with my feet sticking out of the door when I was thinking to myself, "What if I looked up and saw a bear?" (I know I'm weird) Anyway, I look up and see a pair of eyes that don't belong to Brent or Ayden. I started freaking out and Brent saw what I was looking at and scared it away. It was a raccoon, by the way. It came right up to our picnic table. So afterward, we were laughing at me and joking with each other when I saw it AGAIN! It was coming up right behind Brent this time. I kept saying, "Brent, it's behind you, it's behind you." When he finally believed me and decided to look, it was like 6 inches away from his chair. He scared it away again and I was totally paranoid the rest of the night. It was a funny and scary experience.

The most of the night, it poured rain so we didn't get a ton of sleep but the next morning everything was beautiful and fresh. We hiked about half a mile to see a waterfall and it was so funny because Brent and I kept asking Ayden if he was okay and we realized we should stop asking him and ask each other. He was the one running up the hill, totally excited and we were the ones totally out of breath. It was so funny. After the hike, we made some lunch, packed up and drove to Pineview where we swam for about an hour.

It was so fun. Brent is the funniest person alive, I promise! We would play dumb games like trying to find the coolest rock and Brent was making me laugh so hard. He can usually turn a boring game into something hilarious. After that we drove home. It was so much fun to be outdoors with my family. Ayden loved every minute of it, except at night when none of us could sleep. He played in the stream most of the time. He'd grabbed rocks and chucked them into the water. After he felt like he'd gotten all the rocks, he started throwing leaves in. After a while, he even got enough courage to step into the water.

If you look to the left of this picture, you can barely see Ayden. He was walking done to the stream. He played in it almost the entire time we were there.

This is my FAVORITE picture of Ayden! This is the first time I told him to smile so I could take a picture and he actually did!

This was up while we were hiking
We found a backpack that was just Aydens size for camping and he LOVED it. He wore it around a lot of the time.
Hiking to the waterfall
Aydens cute backpack

Me and Ayden

This was the waterfall. Ayden really liked it up here.
The waterfall
Ayden, up close and personal. haha
Brent in the morning. Watch out!

Brent got his sling shot out in case the raccoon came back

Setting up the tent