Pinetop overnighter

Once upon a time at the end of February we headed up to the snowy mountains for an overnight camping IN A CABIN trip. It was super fun and sooo pretty:

Our wilderness destination was a church-owned campground called Pinetop, which is actually where I went to girls' camp for several years back in the day! The cabin was a nice mix of luxurious (fridge, stove, lights, outlets to plug in our space heaters) and roughin' it (outhouse, no running water).

Sledding was the name of the game up there - an adventurous group went out that night and then the rest of us joined in on Saturday morning and afternoon. Clyde had all sorts of fun:

As did Will, including convincing Shelly to take him down with her ;). He also took a few breaks to do some snowy climbing.

The Swensons are hardcore sledders and Cameron even got a few runs in on his snowboard:

Jackers was initially pretty hesitant about snow... and cold... and sledding. He stayed in the cabin for quite a while before we lured him out - and even then he wouldn't put on his snowpants haha. But once we got him going, he (mostly) loved it!

Carma, on the other hand, LOVED the snow... and cold... and sledding. We were hard-pressed to keep her inside the cabin for any length of time:

And of course everyone should please enjoy my ridiculous facial expressions as I sled down a VERY SMALL HILL.

I couldn't help but find a picture of the Pinetop Lodge from my girls' camp days, that's me wearing my favorite dolphin shirt in front of the lodge circa... 2000 maybe?

(The top floor of the lodge was where all the junior leaders stayed and it had REAL bathrooms and REAL showers and was thus highly coveted.)

 Most of the gang (Carma and Jack and I stayed back) went on a little hike Saturday morning and got some super cute pictures at the top:

On the left is the view of where they hiked up to (you can see them posing for the pictures) and on the right is the view of back down at the cabin!

Inside the cabin = lots of good food and fun games to play together. We taught Swensons how to play Qwirkle and then Andrew schooled us all. Carma surprised us all by willingly sitting with Dan for a few minutes - she LOVES Shelly (her then-nursery teacher) so she must have decided he was okay by association ;).

And little kiddos running around and being yahoos :). The picture of Jack and Jaxen (drumming on the bed which made for a pretty horrific sound haha) makes me laugh - those two boys are one week shy of being a year apart in age, but since Jack is in January and Jaxen is December, they get to be in the same class all through primary and Sunday School. Heaven help their teachers if either of them ever emerge from their current 'shy in public' stage ;).

And pretty much everyone fell asleep on the drive home Saturday evening haha! I told the kids that they should all thank Daddy profusely for taking us on fun campouts like this because the windy drive from the main road to the campground terrifies me... especially in the stick shift truck... and there is a 0% chance I would ever drive it alone. So yay for Chuck!

 

I don't think I've ever been accused of being outdoorsy... but this was a perfect 24 hour escape from life (no cell phone service! or internet! Aren't we all proud I survived??) with excellent company and next year we'll remember the pizza cutter ;).