In the morning, Lily made hand pies with the kids. She thought they didn’t turn out well, but I absolutely loved them and ate my fair share of them over the next few days.
After work I took the kids camping. Three or four weeks ago a neighbor friend, Todd Covington and I both decided to go this weekend. Then we both forgot, and he didn’t remember until he saw his calendar reminder, and I didn’t remember until he texted me yesterday and asked if I still wanted to go. I have been unbelievably overwhelmed lately (June might have been one of the busiest and most stressful months of my life), so I considered not going, but Lily encouraged it, and ultimately the desire to be in the mountains with my family and a friend got the best of me and I decided to go.
It was a bit crazy because I pulled away from cranking very hard on work about about 6:05 and then threw a bunch of stuff in the car and headed up the mountain. When we got there (the campsites right next to Big Springs Park) we saw signs say no fires due to the extremely dry conditions. Lily bought ingredients for amazing tin-foil dinners, and I prepared that and salmon earlier in the day and I was very determined to have that dinner. So I drove home quickly with the kids, threw it all on the grill, then packed it up nicely so it would still be hot, and made it back to camp by 9:15.
Back at camp, the kids were totally crazy, especially Ammon who was so excited to be with and riled up by his good friend Casey. Clarissa was also quite wild, and all five kids were running all around the picnic area in the dark, jumping on tables, going in the bathroom (for fun) and generally not listening to instructions (mostly the younger ones). Trying to manage that chaos and keep them from going too far away, putting dinner on, cleaning up, and still feel stress from the work day and the hurried trip home, I admit I was feeling pretty stressed, and having a hard time sinking into conversation with my friend Todd. Still, it was awesome to be with him, see the kids were having so much fun, and be in the mountains. Also, the salmon and tinfoil dinners were absolutely superb.
At night I was apologizing to the kids for being grumpy, and I imagine I also pointed out how wild they were being because at one point Ammon said something to the effect of, “Dad, I was so wild because I was excited.” I’m so glad my kids had such an amazing time and I hope my grouchy imperfect parenting didn’t spoil the occassion (and it did seem somewhat necessary given the circumstances).
