Blue Lake or Bust

I can't believe how time gets away from me so fast! Here we are in the first month of school already. I've been meaning to write and catch up forever. The first thing I need to document is that we all survived the first ever Harwood family backpacking trip. I carried Tayson in the Kelty pack and each of the boys had a pack with a few things. Clint's pack was monstrous! We hiked in to Blue Lake with Robin, Denny and Jake (Clint's sister and her family). We were excited to all go on a hike together.


The boys looked so cute with their backpacks on. The way there was downhill. Everyone was excited and all did amazingly well. It was about a mile long hike to get in to the lake. The downhill part was nice . . . except for the fact the the way back was all uphill. Still, they were all real troopers, but it was a lot tougher and a lot slower going.

CUTE!!! DIRTY . . . BUT CUTE!!!

I told you they were dirty. In case you were wondering, at least half of the mess around Rylan's face is chocolate pudding. We really didn't make them eat dirt.


Blue Lake was a beautiful area with a lot of rocks for the kids to climb on and explore. They had a ton of fun scurrying around them.


Ethan took the camera for a while and this is one of the masterpieces he came back with. He actually took some pretty good pictures. This is Jake, Camden, and Rylan-- the kings of the mountain!

What can you say about that look? :)

This was on the hike back. Poor little Tayson had been napless except for in the backpack. He was so tired. Apparently the junk food that was on the menu didn't agree with him . . . on the drive back home he puked all over his clothes and the car seat, and yes on the new van. (At least it wasn't while he was in the backpack!!!) A couple of minutes later he started up again, luckily a spare diaper became the barf bag on that one. We stopped at Couger Mountain Lodge to hose him down and change him into over-sized, dirty clothes from his brother. I'm sure we looked like we had been in the mountains for months! Can you say red-neck! It was a lot of work, but so worth it for the memories!