This is about the 3rd time I have tried to blog, but I can't get any pictures to load onto blogger. I'm kind of bummed because I have some cute pictures of my kids, but I figured I better just blog and forget the pictures for this time. Maybe next time I can get it to work. I guess I will just have to let everyone know what we have been up to this last 3 weeks.
1st up- we had a ward campout the middle of August. It was a lot of fun with only a few mishaps. We went up on Thursday the 14th and we were the first ones there. We picked up the keys to the stake property from the bishop and headed up expecting the bishop to be coming up a couple hours after we got there. The road up to the property was crazy- I am not a big fan of twisty mountain roads and this one was not one of the best I have ever been on- it was very narrow and 3 of the 5 miles was dirt. We made it to the camp safely, with I'm sure just a few new gray hairs on my head and set out to pick a campsite and set up our tent. It sure is a good thing Jake is such a good sport, and a brave soul camping with me and 4 girls. We got the tent set up without too many problems until we tried to set up the screen porch part of the tent, and ran into the concrete surrounding a stove. We decided to scoot the tent back, so up came all of the stakes and Jake, Christena, Savannah and I all tried to pick up the tent and move it. Then we had to stake down the tent again, only this time to find we needed to turn it so we would be able to get in and out. Up came the stakes once again and again we moved the tent. The third time was the charm and we were finally ready to go. We were fine until dinner time when we pulled out our little table top grill and coleman stove to fix dinner and the matches I had packed wouldn't light. I had just stuck about 20 matches in an old pill bottle so I wouldn't have to mess with the box and it was smaller to pack. Unfortunatly these matches were the strike on the box kind. We went through about half the matches before we finally got the grill lit so we could cook the hamburgers and hot dogs. I don't know if I was thankful that no one had shown up yet to see all of this, or if I wished there was someone to borrow some matches or a lighter from. Luckily that was the only problems we had and the rest of the weekend was a success and we all had a lot of fun. There was a zip line that the girls couldn't get enough of- I have some cute pictures, but of course they didn't pull up so you don't get to see them. The kids even convinced me to go on the zipline on Saturday before we came home-again there is a picture but, well, you know.
Since I last blogged we also have had the start of a new school year...Yeah! Christena and Savannah started back last monday, but Olyvia doesn't start until Thursday. She did her kindergarten testing last tuesday and flew through it. When Jake asked her how it went she told him it was really easy. She is such a smart kid I hope she doesn't get too bored with the work.
Today, (labor day), after the rain and hail cleared up we took the kids to the Hogle Zoo. We promised them last spring we would take them and got rained out that day and never made it over the summer, so we figured we would give it another try. We got some cute pics of the kids here too. I may try to post them another day. One funny story though- while we were looking at the animals we saw the cougers. Jake said to Olyvia, "Look over there, there's a couger." Olyvia follows this comment up with, "Rise and Shout the Couger's are out!" all Jake could say is, "I've raised her right!" Anyway we had a fun day and thankfully the weather finally cooperated and we could take the girls to the zoo. Tomorrow they get to head back to school.
