60+ picture post!

I forgot that I needed to post about Kinder Springs before I posted about school! Every year I start to get excited to be at Kinder Springs (my happy place) about a week ahead of time. I start thinking about it and looking forward to it. Funny because a few days beforehand this year, Justin told me he'd been thinking about it for days and dreading it... It's certainly not an easy trip. Once again we were too cheap to rent a trailer so we were tenting it again (at least this year we had a port-a-potty rather than a hole in the ground!). It was only a Thursday - Sunday trip. We put the older three kids in one tent and Daisy and ourselves in another tent. We got lots of rain and the kids had a great time!


Adaira and the girls. She has three cousins close in age and they have a blast playing together all day long.

They even let Dale join them on the hammock for a little while.

Brighton's favorite activity is riding the quads, even though it's illegal for him to do so under the age of 16, and without a helmet... We need to remember a helmet next year!

Here is is arguing with his cousin Aiden (2nd cousin) about who's turn it is to ride...

Hanging out at camp. Cards, board games, and snacks are all a MUST!

Dina Goodman came up by herself to join us and we really enjoyed having her there. She brought the biggest hammock (we had a few other smaller ones), games and snacks, as well as her fun attitude.
 


The main thing I dreaded on this trip was Daisy's night time sleeping. I was so worried she would start waking up all night long in this new environment with all kinds of sounds of nature occurring. She did awesome! She only woke up once on the first night and I didn't even have to get up with her. She cried for a couple seconds and went back to sleep. She did great at taking her naps during the day too. My little angel girl!

Dale took a nap the first day too. He is still in a crib at home and so we weren't looking forward to him sleeping in a non-confined space, but he did alright. He tried to get out every night after we put them to bed, but we'd just walk off to my parents camp and take the light with us so he'd be too afraid to come out of the tent. After we were done playing games with the adults for the night, we would just come back to the kids' tent, rearrange everyone and get them back on their pads and in their sleeping bags, and all was well!

Time for a family walk! It wasn't super cold but with the rain it did get kind of chilly, hence the jackets on everyone (but Justin, who rarely gets cold because he has the metabolism of a cheetah)

Found this cool gnarled up bunch of tree roots and took a family picture (minus 70% of Daisy's head)

That tree looked kind of weak, so of course Dale thought he could destroy it and make it fall over.

Just a sassy bunch of Owens'

 We told Adaira and Brighton to look "sassy." Obviously Adaira already has that look down. Brighton wasn't quite sure what to do.

Brighton wanted to carry Daisy for a bit. She was so heavy for him, but he did a good job. Judging by this picture I would say that kid has his mom's eyebrows!

Best caboose I could have asked for...

We walked about a mile and Dale had had enough.

The next day we went to Dry Lake. I was sick on this trip and was suffering from a cough/chills/fatigue on and off so I was clad in this big jacket the entire day. After we got home I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with a lung infection (specifically I was told that it sounded like I had an orchestra in my chest), probably pneumonia but I never got a chest x-ray to confirm. All is well after a week of antibiotics!

Of course the tire swing was a hit, as always.

check out the smile on that kid!

We caught Dale "being nice" to his baby cousin Charlotte. He was jabbering so sweetly to her and saying "Hiiiiii baby" while he tried to feed her grass.... Oh Dale...

Grandpa came over to watch the fun.

Uncle David brought out his huge gas powered remote controlled car. I predicted a freakout by Dale...

and a freakout occurred. He wanted to be held immediately when that car started going.

See the concern on his face when he was put back on the ground, even though Uncle David was done and was far away driving the car back to camp...

I was sick and tired of being sick, damp and cold, so I folded down the back seat in the van, turned on the heater and let the kids play while I warmed up. I turned on our Dr. Seuss CD and before I knew it, we had our kids plus 2-3 cousins sitting in there munching on apples and carrots listening to "The Lorax".

The next day we went back over to Dry Lake to watch some hound dog hunting "stuff"
This group of people had a live raccoon in a cage and then a racoon skin tied to a rope. The would stretch the rope across the lake and the other end would be tied to a tree where the live raccoon was hanging in a cage. When the chase started, the dogs all jumped in the lake and swam across chasing the raccoon carcass.

Then they would follow the rope to the tree where they had the raccoon "treed" and they would bark and jump at it. Apparently the dogs were judged by how close they followed and how high they jumped at the raccoon in the tree. Some people would call this kind of stuff mean, I think it's just a subculture of hunters and their hound dogs and it was fun to watch and see what they do for fun! You can see the live raccoon in the picture below in the cage directly above the girl in the pink shirt.

Adaira and her cousin Ashlyn walked over to get a closer look.

Dale wasn't too interested so he decided to become a pot-head.

Potato Lake

Potato Lake is so incredibly picturesque and beautiful, that of course the National Forest shut the area down to campers. You can only pass through a narrow fence opening to go in there, and the signs specifically say that you aren't allowed to camp in there. Such a bummer because there aren't many good places with water access that you can camp at in AZ.

Not that I'd want to swim in this green water, but I'd sure love to have this view when I step out of my tent every morning.

This picture is classic. Both my parents were sitting on that log and I lifted my camera up to take a picture of them. Just as I did, my dad stood up and my mom leaned over to try and get up herself. I waited for a few seconds for her to stand up but she was taking a while so I just snapped it anyway. We got a good chuckle out of the "centaur" they created in this picture. Justin made a comment to my mom back at camp that he was glad she could get her head out of her husband's rear-end, lol...

Here's a better picture of them

On the way back from Potato Lake we saw this awesome camping spot with these cool rock formations. I've never been open to camping anywhere other than Kinder Springs, but this place looked super fun for the kids.

Then Dale decided he had to get up top too, and he of course wanted to stand at the edge of the rocks over the steep, rocky hill, and I decided that this wouldn't be a great place to camp after all, not for at least 2-3 years anyway. Trying to keep Dale from breaking his neck all day long on the rocks doesn't sound like a fun camping trip to me...

Brighton found a horny toad at camp and insisted he get to bring it home as his pet. I fussed about it and said it wouldn't be good for the lizard, but then he said that his cousin Riggs was taking one home - which I confirmed with his mom and was not too happy about it, but how could I say no then?

"Horny" as they named it, rode home in the plastic container on Brighton's lap. He loved him all day long and carried him around constantly for two straight days. On Tuesday I had been at work (yes I'm back working part time temporarily, long story...) and I came home and the lizard felt cold. I told Brighton to take him outside to warm up. As Brighton was doing so, I said "Not in the sun!" but he didn't hear/listen to me and he set the plastic container directly in the afternoon, July AZ hot sun, without water... I should have checked to see where Brighton put him but I didn't. He went out an hour later to check on him and came in devastated and crying "Mom! Why did you tell me to put him outside!??" Poor Horny was dead. Brighton was so so sad and cried off and on pretty much the rest of the day. He's been asking for a pet for a couple of years now but I haven't wanted to deal with the inconvenience and mess/responsibility of a pet - because I have Dale :), but I could see that he wanted to love on something, and that's a good thing.




So the next day, Cleo (or Chloe, but it seems like she gets called Cleo more often than Chloe) joined our family. Sigh...

She's 8 weeks old and freshly spayed with her first round of shots. She's got nice sharp claws that are already scratching where they shouldn't be scratching... but she is very social and loves to cuddle. Brighton couldn't have been happier when he got to fall asleep with her snuggled up next to him in bed the third night she was here.