Winter Camp

Earlier this month my buddy Jonathan Owens asked me if I wanted to take the kids winter camping. Camping in the winter? Any insane person would have said yes. So of course I said yes. The camping expedition was set for American Fork Canyon. Amanda and Shantell "had" to hold down the home front. They also had to attend some Saturday dance rehearsals.

We arrived at the campground around 5:00. The temperature was 39 degrees. We began to setup camp and built a fire to cook our tinfoil dinners. There were a bunch of Quin-Zee's that had been built, but none of them were inhabitable. The roofs had all collapsed on all of them, but that that didn't keep the kids from playing in the ruins.

After dinner, the kids hung around the campfire and explored the night. I brought a collapsible shovel along and T-y spent a lot of time digging in the snow. T-y crawled under one of the picnic tables and declared that he was going to sleep there.

Brielle informed me at 8:30 that she was tired, so I put her to bed. T-y and I retired around 10:00. It was 44 degrees when we went to bed. I was awoken to the sound of Brielle's voice around 12:30. She had gotten out of her sleeping bag and was wandering around the tent looking for me. She had to go potty. I checked the temperature and and it was still 44. I went back to sleep and was woken up by the call of mother nature around 4:30. I checked the temperature and it was 35 degrees. I checked on the kids and they were soundly sleeping. I was then awakened by by T-y and Reese around 6:00. Apparently they thought that it was time to get up. T-y and Reese wanted to start a fire, so I chopped up some kindling and they placed in on the coals and got the fire started.

When Brielle awoke, she helped me cook breakfast. Breakfast consisted of backed blueberry muffins, oatmeal, hot cocoa, and hot apple cider. My brother has a handy dandy backpacking oven that I used to bake the muffins. It's a cool piece of camping equipment to have. I don't have one, so feel free to gift me one.

After breakfast, T-y got into a fight with one of the sleds. It appears that the sled didn't like how T-y was playing with it, so it struck him in the upper lip.

I got him cleaned up and he decided to climb up the side of the mountain. He then proceeded to slide down the mountain on his bum. Reese and Brielle saw how much fun he was having, so they decided to join him.

The rest of the kids decided to join them as well.

Around 10:00 Andrea and Avrie showed up to camp and we they proceeded to the Tibble Form Dam for some sledding. The kids had a blast. The only issue the kids had is with the jump. Baylor spent some time recovering from a trip over the jump. This same jump always got Brielle as well. She didn't mean to go over the jump, but apparently the sleds had it out for my kids. The sled that Brielle sent Brielle over the jump. And despite the better judgment of others, I decided to try the jump. In order to avoid death, I bailed out mid flight.

Here are some additional snapshots:

You can check out more photos in the photo gallery.

P.S.
The sky wasn't really that clear. I have been working on my photo touch up skills.