Tonto Creek

This past weekend we headed up to the Mogollon Rim to do some camping. It was really fun despite all the many many things that went wrong. (I've been working on my attitude after Enrichment last tuesday - lets see if you can tell...) We left a little later than planned so we ended up not camping in one of the nicer campgrounds which was totally fine with us because that meant we didn't have to pay a fee. It also meant we couldn't build a fire. Say what! No worries, we brought our grill that we could hook up to our adapter in our car. That worked for about 0 seconds when it blew the fuse to our cigarette lighter. Oh my. Yep, cold hot dogs for dinner really hit the spot (not). The kids didn't complain though. They were super excited about the whole camping thing. Even Wilson who had about THE soggiest diaper I had ever seen because his brilliant mother forgot DIAPIERS!! Ha ha ha ha. It was so funny. He got to sleep in that diaper and then went commando all the next day without a single accident. We just kept making him pee in the bushes and he did great. Zina unfortunately decided that peeing in her sleeping bag was a better alternative then getting out in the cold night air to do her business. I'm sure it made things warmer for a little while. I think it happened in the morning so we just changed her clothes when we woke up and put her sleeping bag away. We ate chocolate puffed wheat squares for breakfast since scrambled eggs, flap jacks and sausage don't really hit the spot raw, and then packed up for a hike. The hike was so fun and absolutely beautiful. It was one of the 20 most hiked trails in AZ so we saw a lot of people but it really was beautiful. We had a little picnic on the banks of Tonto Creek, traversed logs over lava streams, swam down the trail singing, "Just around the River bend" over and over and got good and tired so we could sleep all the way home. (except for Mark of course who drove). Good times had by all and believe it or not we are actually really excited to go again! Here's to Camping!

And of course the pictures are in no order at all so enjoy. :)

Me and Zina making a giant leap over the creek. (We made it)

We found all kinds of fascinating caterpillars, crickets, grasshoppers, spiders, butterflies etc. Life is so fascinated through the eyes of a child.

Up the creek from our picnic spot.

Here's where we ate lunch. It was of course our castle where the evil stepmother couldn't find us.

You're supposed to smile Wilson!

Love those tall Ponderosa Pines

My hunk of burn'n love.

The kids did so great. They LOVED camping

Notice the bag beside me full of a urine stained sleeping bag and blanket

Good Morning Beautiful

Cheese!

My little baller

Yes, we couldn't blow up our air mattress either since our pump plugs into the blown cigarrette lighter. Guess we could of done it ourselves. Mmm no thanks.

Setting up the tent!

Funny story. On our way home Zina pipes up from the back seat and says, "Someday can we move? I really want to live somewhere with rain and snow. I don't like the desert it's too hot."

Well, I guess we won't make AZ our permanent home. Zina has spoken.