White Rocks 2010

   Finally, a post about one of our camping trips!  This trip is our traditional trip out to White Rocks.  White Rocks is a lovely place out in the desert by Tooele, UT.  We like to start our camping season as soon as possible (the 1st weekend in May) so we can get as many trips in as we can before the snow flies.  We're die-hards like that.  

   This year was a lot like other years, but we keep doing it because it's always fun!  There is always lot's of food, four-wheeling, games, hiking, shooting and sitting around the fire.  A new thing that some of us did this year was paint-balling.  Here are some of my favorite pics from the trip. As I was looking through them to decide which ones to post, I realized that on this trip Samuel wasn't walking yet.  Now that he is running it feels like it was forever ago that he wasn't walking...

Steven and his friend Gavin playing in the "sand pile". See, we dig out a fire pit to use, and we pile up the dirt to the side.  We let the kids use the dirt as a sand pile all weekend and we enjoy our fire. At the end of the weekend, we put the dirt back into the hole burying the fire and getting everything back to the way it was when we came.

This is Sammy in the tent. I was giving him a chance to move around on his own. He didn't have much fun because I was a party pooper and wouldn't let him crawl around in the dirt, and since he wasn't walking yet, he spent the entire weekend getting held. He got really tired of it REALLY fast!

Here is Matt in all of his paint-ball gear.  He was excited to take it all and use it. He spent the winter getting really into paint-ball and getting all geared up. It was the first chance he had to use it all! Thanks Brian and Bonnie for playing with him!

Steven and grandma around the fire. He is holding one of the flashlights that I got him to take on camping trips. Steven always wants to play with a flashlight, so I went to the dollar store and got a couple of super cheap ones for him to play with. That way, if he breaks it or loses it, we are only out a dollar and he doesn't really care about the quality of the light.

We spent the entire weekend trying to convince Steven to put on his helmet and go for a ride on the 4-wheeler. He wouldn't do it until the last day that we were there. Matt just shoved the helmet onto his head anyway, and we sent him with uncle Brian for a ride on the Rhino.  After that, we couldn't get him off of the wheelers.  Lesson learned:  Just shove the helmet on him the first day even if he screams so we can spread out all of his rides over the entire weekend.  The helmet isn't so bad once he remembers how fun the wheelers are... 

Steven and Brian in the Rhino for Steven's first ride of the trip. To this day he talks about rhino's and points them out whenever we see them.

Matt, Brian, Bonnie and I all went on a little ride the last morning that we were there. Lots of fun and we saw a little bit of wildlife: 1 gopher snake, 1 wild horse, and 1 dead cow (all that was left was the bones). Good times.

One of our other traditions is to ride the wheelers out to the road. Let me explain... to get to White Rocks, you take a paved road for about 45 minutes then you turn onto a dirt road and drive west for another 30-45 minutes. When we go home, a few of us ride the 4-wheelers on the dirt road out to the paved road and then we load them into the trailer there. This year, Steven rode along and LOVED it! Here he is with Uncle Brian showing how he felt about it.

This is Sam while we were driving out on the dirt road. I think he was just a little worn out.

Steven about 5 minutes after we put him into the car after he got off of the wheeler. He got a little worn out too...

So overall, it was another fun trip and we can't wait for next year. Mostly because this trip means that winter is over and there are many more adventures and fun times to come in the months ahead! ( Yes I am skimming over the holidays in my mind and already starting to look forward to next camping season...  I fully expect the holidays to be VERY busy and winter is cold.)