Fathers and Sons

The Aaronic Priesthood Commemoration campout was this last Friday and Saturday. I spent the entire time running from one place to another (after one person or another), so there are very few photos to document the event.

Here's one of Joseph on Friday night and one of Sam and Ben sleeping on Saturday morning (good time for pictures).

Ben is in my sleeping bag - very comfortable. Sam is in one of three identical sleeping bags that we got for the kids for Christmas 2005. You can't see it in this picture, but I was able to fit four double-sized air mattresses into our (10 man) tent. It was nice.

We had another family in the tent with us. Jared Stenson and his two boys, Rees and Luke liked the accommodations. I parked the van right next to the tent, so that the sliding side door opened right up to the back entrance of the tent. I put my laptop onto the floor of the van and we watched Return of the Jedi. I have an FM transmitter that plugs into the headphone jack, and we were able to transmit the movie sound right into the tent through some flashlight/radios that Denise and I got at Costco. It's not often that "camping" and "surround-sound" go hand in hand, but it worked great for us.

All in all we had a great time. Joseph is old enough to understand that he needs to be responsible, but not quite old enough to be responsible. Case in point: I instructed him that his most important job was to stay close to Sam while I pitched the tent. They ran off with the other boys, and a few minutes later, back comes Joseph, alone. He reported to me that he was doing a good job staying next to Sam. He just wanted to let me know. "Where's Sam?", I asked. "He's by the pond." was the response. This wasn't the one I was looking for, as my only other instruction was "Don't go by the water until I come with you." Did I mention that Joseph was already muddy up to his knees?

This year was a blast. Next year will be easier.