Picture Time!!!

 I got these cute dresses for Katelynn and Amber while we were on spring break.  There was a Gymboree outlet in Pigeon Forge and they were having a  sale where everything was $10 and under.  I thought that they were too sweet to pass up.  Since Easter Sunday was conference, we dressed up the following Sunday!  :)  I love these two sweet matching girls and wanted to take some pictures.

 Our church is in the afternoon and Katelynn was getting tired.  She sometimes goes to sleep before we go, but wouldn't fall asleep this particular day.

 Aren't they so cute?!?

 And then I tried to get one of all the children together.  Hahahaha!!!  It never does quite work out right.  At first Katelynn was so grumpy and mad.  She screamed for about the first 5 pictures.

 And then she decided to smile, but Aaron had his eyes closed.

 This one would have been pretty good if Brian would have been looking at the camera.

 Oops- Katelynn is not looking again.  Evan and Aaron were wearing their Easter things from last year.  They still pretty well fit.  And Weston and Brian were in their suits to pass the sacrament.  So, they all kind of matched and looked so snazzy!!!

This one was the best of the lot!  Happy Easter (a little late!)  We hope everyone had a wonderful Easter day!

Easter Time

 We got home from camping on Easter, just after lunch time.  The kids found that the bunny had come while we were gone on our trip!  :)  They were excited to see what they had, but first the car had to be unloaded and baths had to be taken! 

 Katelynn and Amber were some of the first ones done and they loved seeing what they got in their baskets.  I was still upstairs helping Evan get his bath, so Barth was on camera duty!  It had been warm when we left, so I had left the heat off, but it got chilly while we were away, and it was only 63 in the house when we got back home.

 The kids came down a few at a time, and Brian went up to get his shower.

 They all loved what they got.  After we all had our showers and lunch, we were finally able to do our eggs.  The plan had been to do them before we left, but the entire day before we went camping had been taken up with that trip to the emergency room.

 The kids had a great time coloring their eggs this year.  After we colored them, we watched the afternoon session of conference.

 All of the bigger kids were pretty self sufficient this year.  We had 6 colors of dye, and 6 children, so that meant that each could have one cup at a time.  It worked out perfectly.

 Katelynn was really the only one that needed help this year, and she actually didn't even really need that much help.  She was so cute with her eggs.  She would carefully place the egg on the dipper and slowly lower it on down into the dye.  I thought that she would just drop it in there like they usually do at that age, but not her.  I guess she just had so many good examples of what to do, that she knew just what to do!

 Brian made all sorts of cool color combinations.  He wanted to mix the colors and try new things.  Aaron was the last one done.  He wouldn't take his egg out until he was satisfied that it was the perfect color.  Weston wrote his name on every single one of his eggs.

 Evan colored all of his eggs and then got a black crayon out and wrote his name on them all afterwards.  It worked though!  He had fun, but kept telling me that the red wasn't quite red enough for his taste.

It started raining that evening and rained the entire week after Easter, so we never did get to hunt them.  Good thing we had the egg hunt while we were camping.  :)  The kids didn't mind though.  There was no fancy Easter dinner this year either.  After our crazy week, we had a lovely Easter dinner of cereal and sandwiches!!!!  :)

Spring Break Catch Up

Well, after a few insanely busy weeks, I caught up (for the most part) with the rest of our Spring Break camping trip.  I did a few posts tonight, so be sure to scroll down and check them out!!!  Hopefully I can get totally caught up soon!!!

Around Camp

 Later that afternoon, we took the family on a short hike.  There was a trail head close by our camp.  We had tried to go over to another falls area, but it was flooded.  This one worked fine though.  We only hiked about a mile and half, but it was plenty.  Evan was pretty tired out by the time we made it back to camp.  It was a lovely hike though and a beautiful day.  It was on the chilly side, but not too bad!

 This was looking down  into our camp site.  The site that we had originally booked was about 15 ft by 15 feet and all gravel.  We decided to see if we could change spots.  They were all booked though.  With the rain, only like 2 others showed up over the weekend, but they didn't know that when we came.  This was kind of an overflow camping spot that you couldn't even reserve online, and it had no water or electricity, but that was okay with us.  It was so nice and secluded and full of trees.  It was perfect!

 That afternoon, since Easter was the next day, we planned up an egg hunt in the campground.  The kids had a lot of fun!  Here they are taking off.

 I guess that by the time you are almost 15, an egg hunt isn't quite as exciting as it once was, but Weston was a good sport and hunted eggs just like the others.  :)

 There were some easy ones for the littler ones and some harder ones for the older ones to find.

 Everyone was busy hunting for those eggs!

 We had enough for each of them to have 8 eggs.  So fun!  Here is Amber with her loot!

 And here is Aaron with his!

 Then the kids decided to hide them for each other for a bit too!

 After a few more hides and hunts, they got busy eating their goodies!

 Then the rest of the afternoon was spent playing at the park across the street from our site.  It was right next to the bathroom that they didn't even open till Friday night!    It was a relaxing afternoon watching the kids play in the sand.  Barth was over with Weston and Brian at camp relaxing and starting up the fire.  You can see the cool digging machine that all the kids loved to sit on and dig with behind Katelynn in this picture.

 We love to bring the scooters when we camp.  They were especially fun this time because there was a hill there at camp on the road.  You can just see the top of our tent in the picture.

 The road was higher up than the park and our camp site, so you could kind of see the park from camp, but not that well.  I really thought that we had the perfect spot though!

 At the park they had this log roll kind of thing.  The kids all loved it!  They called it their treadmill!!!

 There really wasn't much to the park, but they still had fun doing their treadmill, the swings and the sandbox with the cool digging machine.

 The sandbox provided HOURS of entertainment for the kiddos!  They loved it!

 

 Looking up towards camp.  See, you can't see our tent from here because of the hill.  But you can see our car and Amber on her scooter.

 

 This was taken on the street looking down.  You can see the group picnic area and pavilion on the background behind Amber.  There was one more tent site, way beyond that pavilion, and then a bunch on the other road that went on the other side of the playground.

 The kids had built these holes and were pretending that they were spaceships or something like that.  They have such great imaginations!!!

 Back at camp, Barth was busy getting the fire ready and whittling on a stick!!

 And Katelynn was busy getting a fruit cup for dinner.  That night it got VERY cold.  Into the 20's.  And in the middle of the night, Amber got sick.  She threw up all over the tent flap and in the tent.  And on Barth's sleeping bag and bed.  And all over her shoes.  We made it across the street to the bathroom where she was sick for at least an hour.  She was begging me to pack up camp and take her home.  It was so sad.  It would have taken hours though, so it was best to stay in the bathroom where there was a heater and wait till the worst had passed.  We got up first thing in the morning though and gave her some Zofran and packed things up and headed home.  We had quite the adventure!!  It was a fun trip, even if it wasn't perfect!  I was glad that we were able to go and make some fun memories with our family!!  What a spring break it turned out to be!!

The Raging Falls

 Our drive back to camp on Friday was slow going due to some really bad storms along the ride home.  We just missed some hail and other bad weather, but there were times that we could only go 10 mph and even then we couldn't see the lines on the road, only the tail lights on the cars directly in front of us.  Thankfully, by the time that we got back to camp, the worst of it was over.  Our tent was wet inside, and the wind was blowing something fierce, but there was only a little bit more rain overnight.  It was cold the next morning, but everything was wet, which included our firewood, so we headed out to see the falls and be in the sunshine in an attempt at keeping warm!  And this is what we saw.  So much for that calm, clear water!!!

 The water came all the way up and into the spectator area for the falls.  The water was raging!!!  It was sooooooo  LOUD!!!

 You could see a bit of the rainbow on the mist coming off the falls, but the height of the falls had significantly decreased just because of the sheer volume of the falls due to the rainfall from the day before.  I was thanking my lucky stars that I didn't have to be there when all that rain fell the day before!

 Honestly, the pictures don't do it justice!  It was a sight to behold!

 

 This picture above here was taken looking towards all those rocks that we had taken pictures on a few days before with the little tide pools and things.  You couldn't see the rocks at all.  In fact, it was flooded all the way up to the retaining wall and covered the walkway down to the rocks!

 We walked on down to one of the overlooks and just looked and looked at that huge and swollen river and falls.  It was something else!

 If you go back and look at the pictures of the falls from earlier, you can see that they were about half as wide just a few days before.  This one is cool when you make it big because you can see the teeny tiny people there standing next to the falls.

 This was taken looking across the way.  There used to be some indentions and hollowed out type areas that we could see when we had been playing at the beach.  Those were all totally underwater. 

 Looking down the river after the falls and towards where we played on the beach just 2 days before.

 You have to make this one big, but this is taken through the trees looking at the beach.  Only, there is no longer a beach.  It is all just raging brown water!

 You can see here the HUGE rock that Weston had climbed up on just 2 days before.  It is surrounded on all sides by water with not a speck of land around it!

Well, we thought that we were getting a family picture that had the falls in it too, but this was too good of a family picture to not post.  Barth never really shaves when we are camping, but he had shaved it into a goatee that morning for some unknown reason.  I can't stand a beard though, so it only lasted that day!!!!  Amber's jacket had been totally drenched the day before in the tent, so she wore mine!  I was thankful that I had an extra one.  That river was something else after all that rain!