General Conference Weekend

Lest any of you believe I am a perfect parent (wait...does anyone actually think this? Have I fooled someone? Can we be BFFs?), I thought I'd post the only picture I took from our Backyard Campout, this weekend.



And why didn't I take more pictures?
Because it was a semi-disaster, that's why.


Despite (or we like to believe it was to spite) our best efforts we discovered:
1) that I am officially not a camper.
2) that my children definitely are not campers.


Friday night was an epic fail. (notice the default dinner--- GV mac n cheese with cut up hot dogs.).

Oh and then there was the campfire. Oh the fire! I won't go into detail, but all I can say is that there is now an 18 inch circle of completely charred grass in the back lawn. It's like a horrifible (yes, I know HORRIFIBLE is not a word. I made it up. Horrific+Horrible = horrifible) tattoo to remind Aaron and I of our night of stupidity.

Stupidity meaning we thought we could spontaneously set up a tent and campfire in the backyard, and have a practice run "camping trip" with the kids and all would go well, the children would be delighted, and we would all get a good comfortable night's sleep and awake chipper and full of love and affection for one another in the morning.
Family togetherness...isn't this what all of you camper people swear will happen?

You folks are liars, I will tell you that right now.

For the non-campers out there, let's be real for a minute. You can count on me to tell you the truth.


Camping sucks, y'all.


Corbin crapped out on this idea about 8:30 pm and Aaron took him inside and put him in his crib where he promptly fell asleep before the door to his bedroom had even been closed....and then Aaron promptly fell asleep on the living room sofa and never actually made it back outside.

The girls were determined to remain strong and stick it out in the tent.


It was freaking freezing.


Camping is COLD! We huddled together under the covers and Quincy put her ice dagger feet under my shirt like 100 times and I am proud to say I refrained from cursing.

To silence---er "distract" the girls from their whining, I decided to cheat and got out the portable dvd player (you know, to completely contradict the purpose of camping by drowning out the elements of nature with the all natural sounds Harry Potter. Let me assure you that I felt like a "Prisoner of Azkaban" on Friday night).


This worked for about 30 minutes.
Unfortunately, it was Bikes, Blues and BBQ weekend, and every two minutes, a Harley Davidson chopper would chug past our house, deafen my children, startle the crap out of us, drown out the movie, cause at least one child to cry, aaaaand remind us that we were outside, spooned uncomfortably into an air mattress and blanket taco, and freezing our cans off when our warm, non plasticy non backyard-smelly non bugg-buzzy non firepit-smokey non motorcycle choppy and quite cozy beds were 30 feet away.
Unable to cast a patronus charm to keep away the icy breathed, joy sucking dementors that encircled us, we gave up at 10:30pm and came inside to thaw out and sleep in our own beds.


I know.
We are weak.
All of you real campers, (read: liars who say camping is fun to trick us into doing something stupid when we could be warm, comfortable, and still like each other) are saying, "Nice try, Willys, nice try."


What I think you are saying is, "bwhahaha! Suckas!"

It wasn't all terrible. A few good things came out of this:

-We learned not to go camping again, this year.

-We were able to teach the children about King Benjamin and how multitudes traveled far distances and camped in tents to be able to hear his counsel. This lesson helped get the kids excited to watch General Conference give modern day counsel AND

-We realized how blessed we are to be able to have the words of our leaders available to us through television, Internet, and magazines and how lucky we are to NOT have to travel and camp out to hear them. I. do. not. know. if we would survive!

General Conference will happen again the first weekend in April and we are looking forward to it. Conference was amazing and inspiring, so for the most part, the weekend was a win....except for that whole camping thing.