Life As Crunchy Veggies: Never Enough Time

It seems that nearly every night I go to bed wishing there had been just a few more hours that day. I never seem to be able to get to any of the "extra" things, this blog being one of them. I guess I'll just have to resign myself to the fact that this is just going to be one of those things that I get around to whenever I can.

What have we been up to?

This summer, we have been camping numerous times. It's probably my favorite thing to do with just our family. It's become infinitely easier since we got a trailer. And I will admit that it's made camping much more comfortable (which I KNOW defeats the point of "roughing it"), but whatever. Brent and I bring 6 kids along for the ride. If there's a way to make it easier, I'm all for it. We've decided that our trailer is our "cabin on wheels." We used to want to own a cabin, but have since decided we'd much rather travel around to different places instead of having to go to the same place every time we want to get away.

We got back from our most recent camping adventure on Sunday. We went with our awesome friends that we met back before we had any kids. They've got 6 kids as well and it's always so fun because our kids get along great. My friend already blogged about it, so I'll just link to her blog here. :)

Our great adventure for the summer was taking a big, long road trip to Texas for a family reunion. We went early so we could spend some time with some other great friends of ours, Steve and Kyrsten. Brent and Steve were mission companions. They have 3 beautiful kids and we always have an amazing time with them. We rented a house together and spent a couple of days hanging out and going to Sea World. It was SOOO FUN!

Then we spent another few days at Brent's sister's lake house. Our kids had some great cousin-time, we ate yummy food, spent time out on the boat, and listened as Grandma and Grandpa (Brent's parents) gave a short life history. We also got to visit Brent's brother on the Air Force base. He is a Captain in the Air Force and is a dentist. It was so fun to see his cute family!

It took forever to get there and back (22 hours of driving). So we took the opportunity to do some fun things along the way. We stayed in Santa Fe, NM one night. The kids were excited about that because of the song Jack Kelly sings on "Newsies" LOL. We were able to all squish into 1 hotel room each night, so that kept costs down a bit. The kids were pretty darn good in the car, although Buddy was his normal "grouchy" self most of the time. We couldn't help but laugh one day when June, sitting next to him, finally yelled out during one of his scream fests, "Sut up, Buddy!" We normally don't say those words, but really....it was just what every one of us was thinking. ;) He finally learned how to sleep well in the van on the last day of our drive. He has since lost this ability.

It was SOOO HOT in TX. We were prepared for heat, but it was still pretty bad. Buddy had a hard time sleeping (as usual) when we were staying in the cabin at the family reunion. And since there were many other people also trying to sleep, Brent took him out for a walk one night in the early morning hours and I took him out another night. 4am in San Antonio is really no cooler than 4pm. I had no idea. I thought the night might possibly bring a little relief from the heat. I was wrong.

Now for some pics from our epic trip. :)

I will warn you that Brent and I are AWFUL at remembering to take pics. We took our camera on our last camping adventure and didn't even get it out of the van. We are so pathetic. Lucky for me that time, our friends are much better at taking pics.....thus the linking to her blog. ;) We apparently didn't get our camera out at all during the family reunion, which makes me terribly sad. Again, lucky for me, Brent's sisters took a number of pics, but unlucky for you, I can't figure out how to upload them here from their picasa accounts. So you'll just have to live with pics from only half of our great adventure.