a night in the mountains

On Friday night we packed up the car 

(or rather, I spent some of Thursday night and all day Friday packing up the car),

and drove into our canyon to join a bunch of our friends for a one-night camping trip.

Camping is a lot of work.  But we had more than enough fun to make it worth it.

Our kids were awesome. They roamed the campsite with the seven other children who came with, climbing rocks, gathering sticks, giggling in tents, swinging in the hammock, and making lantern/flashlight parades.

At one point, all the children were lined up along the fence, talking to the squirrels.  Loudly.  Shouting at squirrels.  

We aren't sure what they were trying to accomplish by that.

After we put all the kids to bed, the adults stayed up way too late around the campfire, toasting poptarts (mostly just Kent), telling "how you met your spouse" stories and laughing about the crazy things people do when they're dating.

 While we were making breakfast on Saturday morning (muffins, fruit, omeletes-in-a-bag, and some donuts one of our friends happened to "gather in the woods"),
two does and their fawns came down through our campsite, not even thirty feet away from us all.  It was incredible-the kids were amazed.

 Fresh baked donuts--there are serious perks to camping in a place where the grocery store (and our homes) are only ten minutes away.  A couple parents had to bail in the middle of the night--there were two very sad babies--I'm sure we would have done the same thing, but thankfully our kids slept great.
Nicholas did wake us up at one point because he was talking in his sleep--saying something about his friend Lily.  He talks in his sleep quite frequently; I think it's awesome and hilarious.

 The squirrels were bombarding us with pinecones that morning. Several of us were hit on the head by falling pinecones.  Nicholas and Ellie were quite concerned about that, so we got out the umbrella to protect them. Ellie looked like a little mushroom walking around with the umbrella-just her little legs visible underneath it.

The fall colors are starting to show up on the mountains, and I'm so excited.  Nicholas was very upset that we didn't stay camping longer-I think he was expecting a week-long trip like when we went with my family last month. 

He keeps asking us if we're going to go camping again "maybe on Thursday we can go?"  We had to explain to him how fall is coming and it is going to get colder--

You can bet I'll be keeping a close eye on these trees over the next few weeks to make sure we get a chance to drive up into the canyon like we did last fall.  

We drove up into the canyon again today-just for a quick drive. Each time we go up there, we come back thinking how awesome it is that we live so close.  

I love our canyon.