Packing up camp (Monday, May 21)

I suppose I should finish up writing about Grover before it turns into June. Fortunately, I'm on our last day when all we really did was pack up and head out. The girls were rather opposed to the idea of going home and let their grumpy sides come out for pretty much the first time the entire camping trip.

When Miriam woke up in the morning and we told her we were getting ready to go home she said, "I wish we could go camping all the times!"

Alas, we have other obligations to attend to—like work and church and school—so home we went.

*sigh*

As Karen put it so aptly, "One of the best things about going camping is going home and not having to worry about bugs and mice and things."

A Perfect Day (Sunday, May 20)

We woke up on Sunday morning and got ready for church; the girls were only a little disappointed that we brought play dresses for them instead of frilly church dresses but, honestly, there wasn't anything that could convince me to bring a frilly church dress to Grover. You never know when someone's going to burst out of the van after church and go running up the hill to go climb trees...

Goblin Valley (Saturday, May 19)

It was freezing when we woke up this morning. Literally freezing. As in there was frozen water outside.

So "the big kids" and Grandpa nixed their plans of doing Sulfur Creek (because that involves two hours of wading through...water) and decided that they'd head straight for Little Wild Horse Canyon and then head on to Goblin Valley and from there to home. Since they were packing up camp, the cabin was bustling with activity, which meant that we all woke up, too.

We had breakfast, I got the girls dressed...and then I accidentally went back to bed on purpose and slept until 11:00 or so while the girls played around outside and inside and Andrew and Grandma played Ticket to Ride. It was a glorious and much-needed nap but it did eat up quite a lovely chunk of the day.

After packing lunch, we headed to Goblin Valley, ourselves.

Rachel was much braver about "the monsters" this year than she was last year. Last year she was terrified and cried for a while before she relaxed and started having fun, all because Grandpa told her that goblins are little monsters and we'd be going to Goblin Valley to play on the goblins. And she believed him 100%.

He told her the same thing this year but this year she understood my explanation that Goblin Valley was named Goblin Valley because whoever named it thought the rocks looked like goblins, not because they actually were goblins, and that I grew up calling such geological features hoodoos, which isn't a scary name at all (except that it rhymes with voodoo).

Anyway, Rachel and Miriam were both excited to go hiking and climbing on the goblins.

And we took approximated one million pictures of them doing so. Are you even remotely surprised?

Cabin Fever (Friday, May 18)

Before we left I had Andrew check the weather report and then I ran to the closet, dug out some extra sweaters and some winter hats and packed those, too. It's a good thing I did because Friday's weather stayed true to what the weatherman predicted and it got cold and windy and wet.


We woke up rather early in the morning because the BYU kids were getting ready to hike Calf Creek.

Rachel had been sleeping with me and Miriam's "camping crib" was right next to our bed. She stirred, sat up, reached for me, and said, "Momma!"

I pulled her out the pack'n'play and into my bed where she promptly stuck her thumb in her mouth and cuddled next to me for a few minutes. She must not have been quite awake through all of that because about five minutes later her eyes fluttered open and she pulled her thumb out of her mouth.

"Uhhh...uhh...uhh..." she stuttered and asked, bewildered, "Are you in my crib?"

She could see the side of the pack'n'play from where she was laying in my bed and assumed that I somehow ended up in her bed instead of the other way around. Her intonation just about killed me, not to mention the way she cocked her head and raised her eyebrows.

"No, silly girl!" I laughed. "You're in my bed."

All three of us just about died laughing and then got up to have breakfast in the cabin kitchen, where it was nice and warm.

Grover 2012 (Thursday, May 17)

We spent the weekend camping in Grover, which is why I haven't blogged since last week. We're home now and have many stories to share. Andrew has, of course, left all the Grover-blogging up to me.

"Boy, you sure have a lot to blog about," he said last night.

"I sure do," I told him, "But not as much as you!"

Hopefully while I write about Grover he'll finish writing about Ghana.

After packing up the vehicles on Thursday morning, we departed for Grover. It's only a 3.5 hour drive but it definitely took us more than four hours to get there. Grandpa followed the van, which Grandma drove, all the way down so that he could stop whenever we had to go potty. And we had to stop to go potty so many times—we stopped three times in one hour just for Miriam, who had to go #1 (everybody out of the car, everybody goes—that's the rule, so that's what happened) and then twenty minutes later declared she had an urgent need to go #2 (this time we didn't make everyone get out because we'd just done that, right?) and then twenty minutes later she had to go #1 again (everybody out, everybody goes). She's going to have to work on coordinating her #1 with her BMs or that drive to North Carolina's going to be really long.

Eventually we made it to the cabin and started setting up camp. Aunt Dorothy warned us that we might find a few mouse carcasses about the cabin—we were the first ones to "use" the cabin this season, though Dorothy and Raymond went last weekend to make sure everything was working and to set out some mouse poison in order to evict their winter visitors.

We opened the door to the cabin and, lo: