Memorial Day Weekend Activities

          It started on Thursday night.  We'd agreed that it'd be fun to go camping with Albert's friend/classmate Jared and his wife Britney that weekend, but hadn't made any definite plans.  Anyways, so Thursday night Albert and Jared were off in Salt Lake City and Britney and I were hanging out at my house.  We decided that we really DID want to go camping and planned out meals, started looking at places to camp, and informed our husbands of our weekend plans.  When they got back to Provo, we told them our short shopping list and we all headed to Walmart and got the stuff.  When we got home, I cut up onions and some tomatoes and started the meat defrosting (not in the microwave...just leaving it in a less freezing environment) and then went to bed.
          The next morning I went to work and then ran over to Mike and Petra's house to get more sleeping bags.  Upon arrival at home, Albert helped me get a few of the things ready (clothes packed, shovel out of the basement, the heavier stuff in the car, etc) and then went to his physics lab.  about an hour or so later I went over to Britney's apartment and we made sure we had everything.  Us girls then headed up to Diamond Fork and found a really nice campground for free.

  We set up the one tent we'd brought

(which ended up not being big enough for us...so Albert invested further into our camping supplies) and started the fire.  We were actually quite proud of ourselves and our fire.

Britney and our fire

About an hour and a half before the boys came

Britney getting water from the stream/river

          While we were waiting for the boys to come, we watched the fire and were amused by the ants burning in the log we'd brought...well..amused may not be the right word...but it was interesting

         About 2-3 hours after we'd gotten up there, the boys came up (having finished their physics lab and made it through a lot of traffic and made stops for ice, wood, and Albert and I's tent).  When they arrived, it started the epic off-and-on drizzling that lasted most of the night.  They were a little TOO impressed that we'd managed to start the fire on our own...ah well.
         Albert and I set up our tent and then we carried our supplies up to our campsite.  Once everything was up at the site, we made dinner (hobo dinners) and stuck them on the amazing coals that Britney and I had made.  while waiting for our dinners (which turned out amazing BTW) to cook, we played around with flashlights...and Albert somehow thought that his super bright flashlight would work better than the camera flash.

guess not.

         When our dinners were finally done, we hid in Albert and I's tent and ate there, which was a lot more comfortable than eating in the rain.  By the time we were done eating, it'd stopped raining, and we went out and cooked s'mores.  Jared proved to be a fire bug and almost NEVER stopped playing with the fire.

         We went to bed around midnight.  I managed to only need to go to the bathroom once in the "middle of the night" aka when it was super dark and Albert had to come with me (we were lucky enough to have a site that had a bathroom).   that was about 4:30 in the morning.  To be honest, I really didn't sleep SUPER well because the ground was hard (we had like...5 sleeping bags under us) and I was only on one shoulder all night.  So I "woke up" again at 7:30 ish and it was light enough outside that Albert decided that I could go to the bathroom alone and he could sleep (haha).  I was unable to go back to sleep after that. So, instead I mostly just sat around in the camp site and...took this picture of our camp:

          Around 9:30, my fellow campers started to wake up and Jared got the fire started (admittedly it was a LOT faster than what it took Britney and I, but oh well.) and Albert and I got out our newly purchased gas stove (I'm slowly reeling him into the world of REAL camping...aka, not in a RV or cabin and acutally roughing it sometimes) and we made a delicious meal of farmer's breakfast (basically you cook bacon, hash browns and eggs together in a pan and it's wonderful) and Albert cooked some corn in the fire (which was also amazing).  We were all pleasantly surprised by the warm (ish) sunny morning it was turning out to be.  

          After we ate, Jared decided to run up the hill near us to a large rock/stone/ boulder and Britney, Albert, and I sat around the fire and cooked s'mores (definately a GREAT choice!).  When Jared got back, he joined in the fun of s'more making.  Albert was daring and ate 2...maybe 3...it was the first sugar he'd had since the start of May.  Let's just say he enjoyed it.  We all felt very accomplished because we finished the WHOLE bag of marshmallows and didn't finish off the chocolate TOO fast (it was still there in the morning right up until the last couple of marshmallows).

          After s'mores, we played Ticket to Ride (albert's favorite board game...exempt for maybe Risk) and a winner was not determined (though we're pretty sure Jared or Albert would have won) due to the fact that it started raining (not fun...since our tents were still up.).  So, we quickly packed the game up and then proceeded to pack everything else up and headed home.

          It was about...2:30 ish when we finally got home.  One thing camping does is make us EXTREMELY grateful for all of the wonderful modern things we have available in our homes.
         At 6 Jared, Britney, Melissa (another of Albert's classmates that he has ALL of his classes with) and her husband (whose name is also Jared) came over and we made pizzas. :)  one crazy mix of everything and the other BBQ chicken.

The Jareds decided to put basically ALL of the pepperoni on the mixed pizza.

(notice the tiny bit with mushrooms...only Britney and Melissa wanted them lol)

          We later added a plethora (I really like that word) of olives, bell pepper slices, cheese, and maybe some other items that I can't remember...I think we had jalapeno pepper on a tiny bit for Britney...ah well.  Either way, the pizzas turned out GREAT!  We enjoyed our delicious creations while watching Knight and Day (which is a freakin' amazing movie btw)
          Sunday, we woke up just barely in time to get ready and get to church (I slept through the alarm beh).  Albert was very sore because of our night's sleep on the ground (he sacrificed himself so that I would have the smoother part of the ground...I think he's still trying to get better from the lumps lol).  We made it to church just barely on time...whew!  After church we came home (I got a snack...since I'm ALWAYS getting snacks and I'm almost always hungry...such is the nature of this child...he's going to eat us out of house and home when he's a teenager), and then left again for Aunt Sonia's house to celebrate Albert's sister, Vanessa, getting back safely from Germany.  We ate lomo saltado for dinner and then began watching a slideshow of pictures Vanessa had taken.  a hour and a half (maybe 2 hours) later we were only a week into the trip and half way through the slide show.  AHHH!!!  :)  it's ok most of the pictures were quite amusing.   When we stopped watching the slide show Sonia let me help her work on a knitted sweater for Johnathan.  We began in Sonia's bedroom then moved out to the living room where albert was laying on the couch and refused to make room for me to sit on the couch...so I sat on him.

          Monday, I woke up around 7:30 so that I could be at work at 8 to do bookdrop.  It took a lot shorter than I thought it would (I was thinking around 3 hours...but it only took about 1.5-2).  After that I went home and woke Albert up and we ate breakfast.  We chilled around the house for a bit and then went to the mall to get the Bourne series (we watched the first one Saturday night and really wanted to watch the rest of them) and also got some cute shoes for me so that I could have something cute and new for summer that I'd still fit into the same after Johnathan is born.  After that, we came home and ate lunch and watched our new movies.  After that Jared and Britney called us and we went over to their house to play ticket to ride again.  Jared won, with Britney in second and me in third...Albert's plans were altered greatly by devious minds.
          So yep, that's what we did over the weekend. :)  lots of fun. :)  lots of good memories. :)