Our school year is quickly coming to an end. Dayna has a little over a week left of school, she received her first year book this week and she has been reading it ever since. I know it's kind of strange for a child to be reading a year book, but she goes through it page by page and reads the teachers names and the students names. She points out all of the people that she knows. We even had to read it last night for her bedtime story. She is a funny girl.
The weekend I decided to take Dax on our first Father/Son campout with our ward. I hadn't heard about the campout unitl last week because I'm had been trying to get Alana adjusted to nursery during the hour that they were making the announcements at church. Well, I picked up a map last week and decided that it would be a fun weekend. Dayna and I went to get our hair cut for our daddy daughter date earlier in the week so now it was Dax's turn to go out with daddy. He would later tell me that our campout didn't count as a "son date" because we didn't go to McDonalds. Anyway, Friday came around at work and I was able to finish a little bit earlier to get a jump start on our drive out to the campsite. Janelle had almost all of our stuff packed up and ready to go. I got home and loaded the car and Dax and I were off with our map. I had asked someone in our ward how long it took to get up there and they said about 2 hours, the pavement turns to gravel and that slows you down a bit. Well I made it to the gravel section in less than an hour and then the fun began. The map didn't have road names it was basically hand drawn once you got on the gravel, I looked and looked for our campsite and our group. The map said to look for the sign, but there was no sign to be found. I must have read that map a dozen times trying to figure out why we were missing it. Dax was being very patient, but when he noticed it getting darker outside he started saying, "this looks like a good spot to camp, lets camp here." We drove and drove and drove, we came across a few big groups, they looked promising, there were a lot of mini vans and fathers with what appeared to be their sons, but no one looked familiar. Well, apparently this weekend was a big one for father/son campouts in the church and this was a hot spot for such campouts. I found the campsites of 4 other wards while searching for mine. It wasn't a stake thing, these were individual ward campouts, I asked each ward if they had heard where my ward was camping, no one new, none of the wards were even in our stake. A few of them offered for us to camp with them but I continued looking for our ward. Well, a little over two hours later I decided we better set up a tent somewhere or start our drive home. Dax really wanted to camp, so we started to set up at about 7:30, I knew I didn't have much time to set up the tent and start a fire before nightfall so I was hurrying.
We were quite a ways up in the mountains but that is one of the only places where grass will grow out here so there were herds of cattle around our camp and with cattle comes cow pies. Dax made it about five steps out of the car and towards the camp before he stepped square in a fresh pie, of course he was wearing flip flops. He was very upset that he had stepped in POOP! and it was all over his flip flops and feet. Luckily Janelle had packed some antibacterial wet wipes so I got him all cleaned up and returned to setting up the tent, a few minutes went by and then he said that he had to go potty, I directed him to private location near a tree and told him to do his business. He stated that he had to go number 2. So I helped him find a more secluded tree and he made the attempt, it was a false alarm but we didn't find that out before he had soaked his shorts in his first forest squating attempt. I quickly finished setting up the tent so he could change into his pajamas and get some dry clothes on. Then I turned my attention to the fire, luckily everything was so dry out there it wasn't hard to get a fire started. We ended up camping hear another wards father/son campout so at least there were other people around. We got the fire going and Dax cooked himself a hot dog, and then he cooked me a marshmellow, and then he was pretty tired. He has been going to bed around 7pm and we didn't start setting up til after 7:30. Dax went into the tent and I watched the fire while snacking on smores. Dax called, "daddy it's time for bed" so went down for the night. It was a rough and very cold night. I woke up shivering and quickly thought about Dax, I had a hooded sweatshirt, long warm up pants on, Dax had a long sleeve t-shirt and pajama pants without socks. I would look over at him, he was burried deep within his sleeping bag, I asked him, "Dax are you cold? because I am" I was hoping he would say yes and come into my sleeping bag to keep me warm but he responded, "nope, I'm not cold." So I doubled up my sockets and assumed the fetal position trying to stay warm. Of course I was greeted with a "get up dad, it's morning time" at the break of dawn, I was expecting that. But it was really really cold out there so we hopped around the tent in our sleeping bags grabbing the doughnuts, milk and orange juice that Janelle had packed us for breakfast. We ate our doughnuts in bed, and then finally got up and going. I asked Dax if he wanted to explore or go on an adventure but he said that he was ready to go home, he wanted to tell mommy about his camping trip and how he cooked his own dinner. So we took the tent down and started on our journey home. Dax fell asleep about 5 minutes into our trip and let me remind you that we were still on the washboard gravel section, so it was a very bumpy ride. The poor guy was exhausted. We made one stop near a couple of tunnels that were carved into the rocky hill side and took some pics. It took us a little over an hour to make it home, a lot faster than the 3 hours it took before we set up camp the night before. So that is the story of our first father/son campout, he had a lot of fun and we made some pretty good memories and that's what counts. It was a long, rough, cold, and special night.
That does it for us, thanks again for all your love and support, we are blessed to have such a great family! Hope all is well with you and yours, and hope you have a great week.
Jon, Janelle, Dayna, Dax, and Alana
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