Usery Pass Park camping November 2010

Friday after my serging class, we took the boys and Shannon up camping at Usery Pass. (Allan had a scout campout). It is a county park of campsites, for tents, RV's, and really anything. We think we have done this for 3 years. The first year we had everyone come up. It was FREEZING. We had the normal hot dogs, s'more's, hot chocolate and the like, and then we hung a sheet on the back of our RV. We had brought up a dvd player and a projector thing and watched Kung Fu Panda. That's how I remember it was so cold. We bundled up everyone with just about every blanket and jacket and towel we had. After we were so well wrapped we could hardly hear the movie. So, we haven't tried the movie thing again. Last year it was cold too, but not as bad. This year I planned for it to be cold. It has been getting down to the 40's here in Mesa (yes, Trudy, that is cold for us) and I was worried about the little boys not having fun. But with the fire going we were nice and warm and the RV wasn't too bad once we discovered the windows had been opened by Griffin and Kai and just needed to be closed. We watched 'How to Train your Dragon' inside after which we did a potty run to the bathroom (a flashlight use) and then started 'Toy Story 3'. Allan had come up to Usery Park with his scout troop but found his way into our RV around 10pm and got to sleep with us. He was probably a little warmer than he would have been inside the scout tent. All in all the boys had fun. I forgot to take nighttime pictures, but here are some fun hiking ones and playground ones. They ended up liking the playground way more than the hike on the hill. Hmm.

Here is the before picture: see the heart? Here is a few minutes later.

And then a few minutes even later: Good old Grandpa with bedhead cleaning up spilled hot chocolate.

Here's a few pictures on the first early morning playground.

He didn't want to be on the rock. He wanted back on the payground. My bad. The start of the hike. Griff, Kai and Shannon went on ahead of us and we let Treyson do most of the walking, climbing and scooting. There was only 3 times that we carried him over rough spots or when he threw a fit that I had taken off his coat. Yep, I had to put it back on before he took another step down the hill. Halfway up.

At the top. This picture is kinda of funny if you look close. Kai was already up on the rock and decided to move over by Grandpa I guess and he slid down. A little scary for me. You can kind of see Doug reaching for him.

In these pictures you can see a white van with a trailer between Treyson's head and Shan's hand. This is the scout troop Allan was with. They had driven from their campsite to the trailhead called Wind Cave. It's about a 3 mile mild to medium hike. Our hike, Vista Trail, umm.... .5 miles or would that be .5 mile? Just enough for little boys to do. m

Uh hu. I know you see it. A heart rock. It was pretty big and actually if you turn it sideways, that is how it was seen by me. I know you see it too.

Here's Treyson coming back down. He really didn't do this too much. He did really well for his age. I was impressed with his footing on this sometimes rocky trail.

The playground at the end of the hike. A second playground. Grandpa's idea of fun.

The swing

We have had a front porch swing - (I really can't call it a 'porch' swing, because we have no porch, it's more like 'blocking a front window' swing) - going on about 6 or 7 years now. I can remember sitting out on it while waiting for Allan's carpool to kindergarten. He is now 13 1/2. So it has been with us a long time. Over the years of sun and weather it has well, weathered. The material was shredding and fading and looked awful. Really awful. We really didn't even like sitting on it lately. While shopping at JoAnn Fabrics I found outdoor canvas material at 50% off. Still at $10/yard it was a scary buy but I bit and got what was left on the bolt. That was on Tuesday. Saturday morning I got busy. I took off the awning part, or what was left of it, and tried to measure it. Um, yeah, a challange. I brought a folding table and my Singer out in the front and away I went. I just took it one step at a time and actually ended up with a decent finished awning. I had to move my table to the shade. We're still in the 90 degree weather! Crazy! I attached the awning back up and got so excited (and Doug did too) that we decided to go forward with the seat part. Um, yeah, major challange. The backing material is this weird plasticy, webby stuff. After ripping off the remaining material, I slowly measured what little I had left and tried to replicate them. I was dreading the actually sewing because I guessed that my machine would NOT handle the webby backing very well, but with help from Dad and Katie, each pushing or pulling on this huge piece, we got alot of it actually sewn on the machine. While doing the side seams (almost finished), my machine started to spaz and I got frustrated and quit. It was Saturday evening and I was done. This is how far we got. Tonight, Monday, we tried again to do it on my machine only to have it fail again and so I ended up stitching it by hand. Which was okay, because I assumed I would have been doing the WHOLE swing this way, so this last little bit (about an hour long) was fine.
Listening intently to Dougs FHE lesson.

After I was done and our FHE was over, we went outside to hang it up. After lots of bolts, hooks, nuts, washers, we were done. Oh, and with help from Katie and Allan, we were done. Hmm....I wonder who has the camera? And it's a good thing I can delete because she liked taking 'bum' pictures. Hey, Shan - where is Al's bum?
As you can see, Katie was only here for a little bit. Just long enough to pose for a few pictures.

Whoa- where does this piece go? Oh, good job Doug. Two bum shots. A happy ending - No NOT THOSE PICTURES up there -

These pictures:

Oh, as you can see, the 'dotted' material that I originally bought was not quite enough so we had to go and get something to go with it. I think it turned out great. Thanks for all your help Doug.