Yurting is Exciting!

We had an exciting time yurting this camping season. Exciting is the only word that could possibly describe our experience. We left early on Friday July 3rd to meet up with my husband's Mother and her husband in Idaho City. While we were waiting we decided to go get an ice cream cone from a place that my husband's sister worked when they lived there. In Holden's excitement to get an ice cream, he slammed his finger in the car door. Completely. It was one of those delayed screaming moments. The one where your child starts inhaling quite a bit of air before delivering the deafening earsplitting shriek. His finger had started to bleed, so I dashed into the car, snagged a bandaid, wrapped his finger, and swooped him up into my arms. The poor guy. It must of hurt horribly bad. But after a little ice cream and the promise of camping, he started to regain normalcy rather quick - especially in light of his injury.

At last, we met up with Gabe's Mother and we were on our way. The Yurt that we stayed at required a fairly decent fire road drive along with a .2 mile hike. It was beautiful. At the end of the hike, the yurt was at the end of a point with an amazing view. The yurt was perfect - it had dishes and a wood burning stove and pots and pans and the most glorious propane burning stove that we've ever had while camping! Totally fantastic. Friday night went off without a hitch. Everyone pitched in with the unloading of our cars. We had time for a little exploring and then we started right in with making a fire and roasting hot dogs. Because I was camping with my in-laws who are absolute masters at this sort of thing, we also had homemade ice cream that was beyond tasty and insanely tasty dutch over brownies. After our feast, we washed down the kids and bundled them for bed. What is so terrific about camping, is that after the kids are in bed, we had a chance for some great adult time. We were able to sit around the campfire and complete our sentences without the kids interrupting us. It was awesome!

Saturday morning we woke up and it was darn cool in our yurt. After the woodburning stove was roaring I got the kids dressed. Holden had watched his Grandma warm herself by the stove. Without thinking about what I was witnessing Holden actually pressed his backside to the stove for a decent amount of time. After he pulled away he shrieked, "It's too hot!" I instantly smelled something hot and burning. Of course. He had burned a huge hole into the back of his fleece jacket. If I hadn't of dressed the kids in several layers, he would have suffered a small burn. Yikes!

The rest of Saturday went without incident. We took a safari into the forest. We hiked around the campground. The kids played with the friendly beetles. They hauled firewood back and forth to the yurt and to the campfire. And we spent some time lounging in our camp chairs and staring at the beautiful forest.
Saturday night the kids did not want to go to sleep. We listened to the giggle and chit chat for about an hour. I think each of us took a turn trying to con them into a slumber. Finally it was Mommy that they wanted and I went in and rubbed their backs until they drifted off to sleep.
Early Sunday morning Holden fell off the bottom bunk of his bunk bed. It was completely pitch black as I vaulted over to him so that he wouldn't wake everyone up. I grabbed him off the ground and put him inside my sleeping bag to help him back to sleep. He fell asleep after a little while.

The next morning we were all kicking around the yurt and Holden was still snuggled into my sleeping bag. Finally it was time for breakfast so I asked him if he was ready to get up. He responded that his, "lip still hurt". I thought -- lip STILL hurts? Interesting. So I pulled down the sleeping bag and was simply horrified by what I saw. His mouth was huge!! There was also a teeny amount of blood right above his chin. We snagged some ice and had him hold it against his mouth. After everything was set for breakfast I decided to look inside his mouth to check to see if his teeth were okay. Inside his lip was a mess. I discreetly asked Grandma to take a peek. I whispered in her ear that I thought that he bitten all the way through his lip. We all took a peek and we all decided that he had completely bitten through.

In a flash my husband I packed up our stuff and started a shuttle to our car. Remember that we had a .2 mile hike in? We put Holden in the car last. Of course he had a fever. Of course he looked terrible. Of course we were over an hour away to our house and an urgent care center. Ugh. On the way home Holden kept throwing up and then crying because it hurt his mouth. Poor guy!

The urgent care person confirmed our fears. He had indeed bitten all the way through. We went home, unloaded our stuff, and started taking care of our poor little Holden. In spite of all of the excitement. We still managed to have an amazing time!!

Lions & Cousins - Oh My!!

While my sweet husband's sister was in town, we took all of the cousins to the zoo. It was so much fun to get the cousins together and let them properly terrorize the town. To our shock, the cousins were terrorized by one of the female lions at our zoo!! The kids were standing in front of her cage when all of a sudden she stalked up and looked a little angry. Then wham! She struck her giant paw against the glass. She did it again, and again, and again. It made poor Spencer scream! Luckily I had my trusty camera to catch the moment.

We later found an elephant statue that misted and a jeep that sat all three Cousins.

Everyone seemed to have a good time. Cousin Lucy slept through most of it. I did manage to sneak a quick photo of her as well.

"Guy Code"

While my husband's relatives were visiting from Portland, Holden was asked to explain what "Guy Code" was really all about. His answer, "Geico is saving money." I think he might be telling us in his own way that we let him watch too much television.