The Cowley Campout

After a whirlwind visit from Daisha and her family, we headed back home and prepped for our camping trip with my cousin, Angi, and her family. The Cowleys arrived on Thursday and the kids immediately began reacquainting themselves. Kimmy was enthralled with Kiersa, so she sat in the playpen with her and commenced an eye-poking session with Kiersa's eyes, but Kiersa didn't seem to mind too much, and the kisses were cute enough to make it all better.

Since I don't cook for company if I can help it, we took them to dinner, and then we returned to give them the tour of our house. It was a bigger remodeling shock than they anticipated, which seems to be the general consensus of all who see our project, and as we were touring, their kids were enjoying getting covered in dirt in our grassless yard. Not only is it dirt, it's dirt that's been pulverized to a fine dust by machinery, so it gets everywhere and in every crevice. We bathed the kids, went to bed, and took off the next morning for Laverne Park to do some river camping. It was lots of fun.
On our way to the swimming hole, we stopped off at the playground. Angi spent her time slathering sunblock on everyone, Hyrum took on the odious job of blowing up the huge raft, I took pictures, and Jared played with the kids.




The river was a little chilly at first, but it was still fun, and Hyrum had a great time torturing the kids (his sisters will know what I mean all too well).






The Cowley canoe

After the water fun, we went back to camp and had dinner. The kids walked, or should I say tortured, the dogs and each other, then we started on dinner.

We had some foil dinner catastrophes (uh, word of advice, triple wrap your dinners in foil, especially if it's a small kid portion), but Johnson-style smores made up for it. (Smores are less messy and super simple if you sandwich your marshmallow with 2 fudge-striped cookies instead of graham crackers and chocolate bars. I'm a happy convert to this method.)
Though it appears to be autumn by the amount of leaves on the ground in these pictures, it indeed is still summer here. The famous myrtle trees of this area are evergreen, but like all evergreens, shed their old leaves after the new ones have grown, hence the summer shed.

In the morning we absolutely gorged on pancakes, bacon, sausage, eggs and peaches. Blame it on the pregnant mom needing to feed her ravenous internal peanut.

I have pictures of Tilly and Dana together almost every time they've seen each other, so I couldn't resist getting a couple shot this time. They even wore a matching hair style. Dana was due one day before Talea, but since Talea was taken early, Dana ended up being 5 days younger.
4 years old

2 years old

1 year old

2 months old