My Soliloquies: Family Fun

This weekend my family did something we have NEVER done before. We went camping together as a WHOLE family. I have 5 older sisters and a brother plus 4 brother-in-laws, a sister-in-law, 4 nephews, 7 nieces, and between all of us 8 dogs. Now, we all grew up going camping but because of age differences and what not, I don't know if all of us have ever been camping together or at least that we can remember. Unfortunately, my oldest sister and her kids could not make it but the rest of us did including 4 of the dogs. We camped at the Willow Campground outside of Lehi. It wasn't as exotic as we usually like or are used to but it was close and convenient. It was a great site though because it was quite big, had lots of big trees, and was secluded (which benefited those who were also camping there because my family is LOUD--imagine the family from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding.") We started off the night with S'mores.

Then, we had a dutch oven dessert cook off. We ended up with three delicious desserts who all won first prize. To work off the desserts we played a serious game of volleyball. Well, I suppose it was more comical than serious because we aren't very athletic. When it got dark we sat around the camp fire telling ghost stories in which my 3 year old niece insisted we had to tell our story holding a flashlight below our chin to illuminate our faces. After we told all our ghost stories we had to lighten the mood with funny stories the theme being: office pranks. Hopefully, none of you work with my brother--he had the best stories. The night ended with my Dad telling his classic "Slew-Foot (a bear) and the handy-dandy pocket knife" story that we grew up hearing on camping trips. I will never get tired of hearing his heroic tale and even finding "slew-foot" tracks outside the trailer in the morning.

All in all we all had a great time and we already are planning on doing it again next year although next time we will go somewhere a little more exciting.

After my Mom took pictures of all the cousins together she of course had to get a picture of the "cousin" dogs! Bailey, Gizmo, Frodo, and Brinkley. Gizmo is the yellow lab/retriever that I had through my teenage years but he grew on my Dad and currently he has custody.