Family Campout

Ok, so I know I said that I was going to post this story tomorrow according to my last post which was like forever ago, but seriously, my life has been purely chaotic lately. The annual Merlin's Family Campout, (although this is really only the 1st time ever that we have actually been able to go) was hosted at Burraston Ponds in Mona. I tried not to laugh at there camping choice right off hand because lets face it... The train tracks were only a 1/2 a mile away, and the whole west side of the campground was someones farm fields... But I discovered if you always look at the east, the trees and the little ponds hide the train tracks and it gives the illusion of camping in the rugged outback... (As you can tell, I grew up camping way up in the mountains with lots of trees, rivers and at least an hour from any sort of civilization... but hey, whatever flips the pancake - right)

We got there late Friday night... Which since it was forever ago, it was on August 7th. We ended up leaving tons later than expected since it was rumored that we would have to take a few other people with us.... Well we went to my lovely MIL's house to get all of there camping gear loaded in the back of our truck too. (Like we could fit much more in there... It was pretty much full with all of our stuff. :)' ) After unpacking all of our stuff and rearranging everything to make room for these over sized tables that my MIL insisted on taking we pulled out around 6:30 that night... Rob was hilarious. He has now insisted on buying an enclosed trailer that we can put everything in, and maybe house a four wheeler or two (his current wish on his wish list). So if anyone knows of one for sale... Let us know. We were lucky enough to get our tent set up right before it got dark. We quickly discovered that we had the biggest tent in the whole campground and had the fewest people and it didn't go unnoticed amongst the gang either... I didn't think we would hear the end of it. The whole time we heard comments like, "You need to trade us tents because we have ____ amount of people in ours and no room for anything." or my favorite, "We saw you putting up your mansion over there..." Our tent is a 7-8 man tent which calculates it should fit 6 people comfortably with every one's gear in it... I learned from girls camp that while it may say it fits a certain amount of people, whoever invented tents don't think of all the baggage. (It must have been a male cuz I'm pretty sure that a girl would think of that) Everyone thinks we are so rich and have to out do everyone... So we paid an extra $15.00 to get a bigger tent, one that we will never outgrow in a short period of time... To me it is an investment to get something that will last for years instead of something to just "get you by". Is $15.00 that big of a difference on what size of tent to get?

The weather was really cold... I don't get it. For many weeks it has been hot and all and then when we plan something like that, it is cold and windy.... Grrrr. Maysie didn't sleep good at all the first night. We had her sleep in her own kid sized sleeping bag and she did ok in it once she was asleep. Then 4:30 am came around and holy Toledo, she woke up angrier than a disturbed hornets nest... She woke up because she was cold and ended up crying for about 45 minutes... Good thing our tent was next to John and Joan's who had a 3 month old baby. Everyone thought it was them making all the noise. :) She wouldn't go back to sleep unless I was holding her in my arms and rocking her. If I tried to just put her in the middle between Rob and I (Totally love our queen size sleeping bag) and just lay next to her, she wouldn't have it. It would just set her off again. For the sanity of all of the fellow campers that set there tents up next to us, I gave in and rocked her what seemed endlessly until she was in a zombie-like state again. :)

We all woke up around 7:00 in the morning, mostly because of a train that went past. Yep they don't have that ordinance there like we have here at home where the trains don't have to blow the whistle at every town or is it road they cross.... Anyways, it was loud and obnoxious all night long! Rob spent the day in the "Man Tent" (Or screened in gazebo shade thing) playing Pinnacle with all the Men hence the name "Man Tent". I spent my day chasing Maysie around... You think the kid was never set free before... We went from one end to the other as fast as you could really think about it. When it got really windy we would hibernate in the tent and she would play with the few toys that we took for her. She is getting incredibly good at her shape sorter toy.
















It finally started getting warm when lunch was over, so alot of the family walked over the the next pond where they had some ropes tied to some trees to swing on. I thought it was too cold for swimming but all those that went in said it wasn't bad once you were all the way wet, (I think they were just completely numb and couldn't tell if they were cold or not). Later that night we did decide to take a turn on the canoe that Vern brought. It was fun but Maysie didn't want to sit still: she wanted me, then she wanted Rob, and vice versa, so we just went in a small circle in fear of falling in from the canoe rocking back and forth with her indecisiveness. At least we got to try on our new life jackets! :) We should have gotten a picture of us actually in the canoe, but we didn't think of it. At least we thought of it right after we got out and we had Joe take a picture of our family in our spiffy life saving devises. On a funny note... Right after we took this picture and set Maysie down she fell over and she couldn't move. It was so funny even though she didn't think so. She just laid there screaming yet she couldn't even touch the ground at all. It reminded me of those sumo wrestling outfits!




















Here is all of the adult single folk taking there turn on the canoe...


















Saturday night we had alot of visitors come most of which I have no idea who they were... I guess that they were some friends of the family that live in the area and some of there friends... Anyways, this one lady brought a guitar along and we had a sing-a-long singing silly camp songs and/or old folk songs. I had no idea that most of the songs had more than one verse... Good thing they made up songbooks for us. :)


















No camp out would be complete without gathering around the fire which seemed to be an all day activity considering the weather. Some of the people brought lots of firewood but since we burned the fire all day too, we quickly ran out and was on a scavenger hunt around the campground gathering up sticks and anything else we could find that could keep the fire burning.
















Most of the people left on Saturday night and there was only a few of us that stayed until Sunday... All of Rob's mom's family stayed along with Joel, Alice, Jeremiah, John and Joan and family,Vern and Sharon complete with kiddo's, Anna Marie and kids, and I think that Jerrod and Fred were there too. We made breakfast which was a repeat of the previous morning, yet we were tons more organized so we were able to eat 3 hours earlier... then we broke camp and got ready to pull out. As we were telling Chris and Bec by, my niece Brooklynn started screaming... FYI: Brooklynn is about 18 months old and is Chris and Bec's youngest. As it turned out, some of the adults were throwing water balloons at each other by the fire and as one of them was jumping away from the "ammo" then they accidentally pushed Brooklynn into the fire. Luckily, there was someone right there that saw what happened and pulled her out quickly, yet she was stilled burned pretty bad. The whole right side of her body was burned, along with a little bit on her face, in her hair, her left arm and both feet. Her right arm and her stomach got the brunt of it and received 3rd degree burns while the rest of it was all 2nd degree burns. We received many miracles that day... My Brother-In-Law Joel was a paramedic for many years and was still there so he knew what to do. Luckily we had some stuff to put on it right away there at the camp and we rushed here to my MIL's house to continue treating it. For some reason Rob's family thinks they can heal burns better than what the doctors can and after seeing her now they must know what they are doing. Don't get me wrong, if it was my child, I would have took her to the ER although I know my husband would have said otherwise, but each parent knows there ability and there child better than anyone else. So now you know the reason why I haven't been able to keep up with my blogging... Alot of my spare time I spend over at my Mother-In-Law's house helping out with Brooklynn. They are treating the burns with something they call Mineral Water, which is a bunch of minerals that are combined together in a liquid form to resemble something like and olive oil. They wrap the burns in rags that have been soaked in this mineral stuff and then they pour more mineral on every 15 minutes to make sure that the rags stay wet. They would change the rags on her every hour or so and give her fresh ones to keep out the risk of infection. Quite frankly, I was really skeptic about the whole thing but it seems to be working really well. All of the small minor burns, (the ones on her face and in her hair) are pretty much gone and all of her 2nd degree burns have scabbed over and you can see where it is making new skin underneath. The big burns on her one arm and her stomach look tons better than when it first happened but it still is trying to scab over all the way but where they were the deepest burns it is only natural for them to take longer to heal. The thing that amazes me is that it has only been just a week and a half. The first few days after the accident she had an extremely high fever and it didn't help the fact that she will in an unconditioned house with really hot temperatures on the outside. To reduce the risk of infections and stuff they had to keep the windows closed so not even a breeze could circulate... Brooklynn gained a heat rash over the rest of her unburned body. When she first got it we couldn't tell if it was an allergic reaction to the Motrin or what it was exactly. On Tuesday night we gathered around as a family and had some family friends come over and give her a priesthood blessing and then that night we had a prayer circle at 7:00 where every one said a private prayer for her at that time. That night her fever left and didn't return until the next day but it only stayed throughout Wednesday and it has been gone. Her rash disappeared by Thursday thanks to the more bearable temperatures and her absence of her fever. Ever day she gets better and better. She is now up and playing with blocks, coloring, and even trying to feed herself... And the last few days she has been doing more and more with her right arm even though both arms are still bandaged good and her right arm is bandaged all the way the the shoulder. She's not out of the woods yet so if you could, just remember her in your prayers...


I have one thing to say, my In-Law's are incredible people. I have never seen so many caring and compassionate people. All of them have taken turns in the middle of the night to stay up with Brooklynn. I don't know too many people, especially single people who work the next morning kind of people take shifts that end or start at 3:00 in the morning with a smile on there face and no complaining ever. In that Priesthood blessing that was given, it said that this would bring our family closer together... Indeed it has.