Back up Mt Lemmon

We ended up going camping again just one week after our Rose Canyon trip. I volunteered to help out with the stake 11-year-old girls camp after we already had the Rose Canyon trip planned. It was pretty convenient- I washed all our smokey stuff then put it right back in the suitcase! 

Some pictures of the drive up Mt Lemmon:

It was Elliot's 4th camping trip in his 8 months of life. I'm pretty proud of that. He did really well! We pulled up just before his bedtime and he went down easily. On Saturday he took great naps and Aaron was playing with him around our tent while I was teaching a first aid class, so when we got to lunch a lot of people were like "wait, has that baby been here the whole time?!?"

Our girls were a lot of fun. We brought this big tent for them to sleep in, but it was too big to sleep on the tent platform and the ground was way too hilly to set it up on the ground. Brother Blaine convinced them that it was fun and exciting to sleep under the stars. They were excited about it until night came and a skunk started wandering around our campsite. We missed most of the excitement because we turned in early with Elliot. No one was eaten by the skunk or other critters. 

We had some high quality campfire chats with many funny stories being shared. Brother Blaine has had an uncanny quantity of bear encounters. We roasted hot dogs and made campfire churros for dinner. 

Our ward was in charge of teaching the first aid rotation. I got to tell a lot of stories about doing first aid on my accident prone mom during my teenage years. We got an unfortunate amount of hands on experience. One girl passed out and fell off the bench during the lesson. I partially caught her, then we got to do the whole "lie down in the shade with feet up and drink gatorade" thing. The poor girl was embarrassed, but everyone else will always remember what to do if someone blacks out! 

A big storm rolled through just before lunchtime. It made it suddenly very chilly. The really nice guy from the Spanish branch lent me his sweater to wrap Elliot in. He was in the campsite next to us and we helped him set up his rather complicated tent in the dark the night before. I got to practice my very limited Spanish, which was fun. 

All cuddled up during the storm

 There is a cool cave tunnel at the church's campground. You go in through this cave and contort a little bit, then climb up through this small opening. The 11 year olds fit a lot better than we did. They were also better at catching horny toads.

Aaron going in the cave

Me climbing out the top