Showing posts with label cousins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cousins. Show all posts

Monday, June 14, 2010

Weekend at the Fort

This past weekend the weather was crazy, so what did we do? We went camping! We had the camping trip planned for a while and were looking forward to it. Needless to say, it was a memorable weekend.

The plan was to take our bikes on FrontRunner from Woods Cross to Ogden, ride just under a mile and a half to Fort Buenaventura and then camp out in tipis or teepees (apparently it can be spelled both ways.)

Well, things went pretty much as planned, but it included a lot of rain. Friday afternoon Ben rode his bike while I ran and pushed Jack in the stroller down to the train station. And who did we run into? My brother-in-law and the kids.

We hadn't plan to ride the train with them, but it was fun that it worked out that way.
When we arrived in Ogden it was raining and it rained the rest of the day and into the night (except for like 15 minutes.) We hung out at Union Station and visited the train museum, car museum, and gun museum.
We had hoped that the rain would let up a little so we could ride our bikes over to Fort Buenaventura, it never did, but we rode over anyway. We had to carry the stroller and bikes up the stairs and ride over the 24th street overpass
and then down the hill into the Fort where my parents and sister had already arrived.

My dad had called me and told me that in some of the teepees there was four inches of water. I thought he was joking, he insisted he wasn't.

Fortunately there were teepees that weren't filled with water.
We are so glad we invited my dad, because he is always thinks of things like heaters for the teepees, which were especially good because he was able to dry out the ground a bit as the teepees of course just have dirt floors.

I am glad my mom came too. I think it was very brave of her.


Jack wasn't particularly happy about the whole situation. He kept saying he wanted to go home, but he is always that way. When we first got to the teepees he got out of the stroller and after a few minutes he wanted back into the protection of the stroller and he didn't get out again until there was a fire going in the teepee.
Besides Jack, the kids hardly complained. They were wet and cold, but they didn't care. Even after riding their bikes in the rain when the arrived at the Fort they played in the water for over an hour.
Then we hung out in my parents teepee, ate dinner and smores before heading off to bed.
In the morning the wind started, and by the time we left a couple of trees had fallen down.

It was just crazy weather. Instead of loading all the bikes up on the cars the kids decided they wanted to take the train home. Unfortunately the wind made things miserable as we were heading over the overpass and the kids to walk their bikes across. Ben broke down crying, understandably. I was just amazed it took that long.
We took the train to Wood Cross and then walked and biked back home without once getting in the car this weekend.
Despite the crazy weather and the fact the weekend could have been completely miserable, we had a lot of fun. We want to do it again, but only if the weather is better.



P.S. Fort Buenaventura was beautiful. I had never been there before and I was very impressed. It's amazing that it's so close to Ogden, it's right in the city. However, it's just west of the train yard so all night light we could hear trains. All of the time you could hear the diesel engines running, sometimes it was really loud. At least it was mostly constant so it was kind of like white noise, but a couple of times in the night it drove me crazy. I would go again, but if you go, just wanted to warn ya.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Cousins

Most of you know that I grew up and still live very close to most of my maternal extended family. Despite the fact that my grandparents had six children, they only have 11 grandchildren. In comparsion to Chad's grandparents, who have over 50 grandchildren, my family is small. I like it that way. Of course I like it because I am use to it, but also I think it makes it easier for us to be close-knit.

I do not have any maternal cousins anywhere close to my age, the closest one being 11 years younger than me. (On my dad's side of the family I have one cousin my age and I haven't seen him for at least 20 years.) Like an only child who wishes he/she had siblings, I often wished I had cousins my age when I saw all the fun my friends had with their cousins. However I like the dynamic of my family. And I also think it's fun that I babysat my cousins and now my cousins babysit my kids.

I love that Ben and Jack have cousins close to their age. Last week we went to ice skating lessons and then swimming at the rec center. During ice skating lessons I watched as Madilynn helped Ben get up after he fell. When we went swimming Brooklynn took care of getting Jack dressed for swimming. Ben went in the men's locker room with Josh (which made me super nervous. I said to Ben, "stay with Josh and don't let anybody touch you.) I was left to just get myself ready. Strange. In the car on the way home, Ben told me that Josh washed his hair for him. Ben can wash his own hair, but I think it's cute that Josh did it for him.

Ben and Jack love their cousins. Of course I love them too. We will see them when we move, it will just take a little more effort. And I'm really going to miss Madilynn yelling out the windows to us whenever we pull up and get out of our car. I am especially going to miss when she yells out her bedroom window at me when she is suppose to be going to sleep.

(Josh, Brooklynn, Madilynn putting on a play for Ben in the rain. June 2009)