An Exciting Weekend

Like I said in an earlier post, we went camping last weekend with Jay & Raini. I wish I had pictures to post, but I forgot my camera! Arg. Raini took some good pics of the kids, though, so when I get them I'll post them.

Our trip was a little short -- just Friday night to Sunday, but it was a lot of fun. We kind of crashed the Holbrook (Raini's family) party, but the Holbrooks are awesome, so it was great.

Friday night we set up camp then hurried off to the hot pools at Lava Hot Springs. Adam loved it there and just kind of hung out in the pools. Alex, however, hates to hold still for any reason so I spent most of my time chasing him around. He finally found a ramp down into one of the pools and decided to play on that. I just sat at the bottom and watched him.

Saturday, we headed into "town" to a park right on the river. The plan was to float the river and eat junk food all day. We put life jackets on the kids and inflated our newly-purchased river rafts and headed out into the river. Adam was with me, and Kirk took Alex. Alex hated the cold water and cried the whole time. Adam actually liked it for a while, until we capsized. The funny part was that he was far more concerned about the fact that his shoes had fallen off than anything. Amazingly, I managed to catch the 3 year old, both shoes, and the raft, and get everything to a nice calm spot in the river. Unfortunately, Adam had changed his mind about enjoying the river and simply wanted, as he said repeatedly, "to go home." I explained that the only way to get "home" was to get back in the raft and continue down the river. Finally after a quick prayer, I was able to convince him to get back in. He cried the rest of the way, but we were able to safely get ashore. Although the experience was a little scary for him, I was grateful for the opportunity to discuss the power of prayer with him as we talked about how Heavenly Father helped us get back safely.

Next, we pawned the kids off on the people not yet ready to go down the river, and we headed up a little higher to try out a couple of the water falls. Raini, Kirk, Raini's sister Jacy and I all headed up together. Raini and Jacy have done the falls before, so they explained to us that you're supposed to stay to the right on the first one, and to the left on the second. We all made it down the first with no problems. Jacy was first down the 2nd falls. I followed after her, flipped out of my tube, and lost my sunglasses. As I recovered, Raini came down the falls. Although she had been lined up to come down the left side, someone had kicked her tube, sending her the wrong direction. Instead of just flipping out of her tube, she managed to catch a rock with her foot.

She swam over to the bank of the river and announced that she thought she'd broken her ankle, but she sounded so calm that Jacy and I didn't take her very seriously. We watched Kirk come down (also on the wrong side of the falls, but he was fine), and then started to realize that perhaps Raini was serious. The three of us reached her at about the same time, and Kirk asked her what was wrong. She showed him her ankle, and it was pretty obviously broken. For a detailed account of the rest of that story, check out Jay's blog about the ordeal http://xd45acp.blogspot.com/2008/06/heck-of-weekend.html. I'll just give a quick outline:

Kirk, Jacy, Danny (Jacy's hubby), and I took Raini a little farther down the river to a bank with less of an incline. The guys carried Raini up the bank and back to the park while I supported her ankle. We loaded her into the back of our Jeep, and Jay, Danny, Raini and I headed to the emergency room in Pocatello. Raini's parents and Grandma followed. Raini toughed it out through the x-rays with no pain medication and was finally informed that she'd broken her ankle in 3 places and done quite a bit of damage to her tendons. They put her under, set the ankle, and braced it, but she'll have to see an orthopedic doctor this week.

Sadly, that was the end of Jay & Raini's weekend. Once we finally got back to camp, they packed up and left. Fortunately, the Holbrook clan made us feel very welcome, and we were still able to very much enjoy the rest of the trip, even though our friends had gone home. We stayed up WAY too late playing Bang! and discussing Family Guy episodes around the fire.

WOW this post is getting long! Sunday morning, we had breakfast at a Soda Springs restaraunt, and after breaking up camp, we decided to try the river again since some people never even got a chance to go down it on Saturday. Kirk and I had one successful run, then headed up with a slew of Holbrooks for another run. This time, Raini's brother Riley went under and hit his head on a rock. He is just fine, but the experience was a little much for an 11 year old. At that point everyone decided they'd had enough, and we headed home.

We cleaned up our filthy kids and got them in bed. I guess they were worn out because Adam slept until 9:30 and Alex until 10:45 the next day. This post kinda makes it sound like a bad trip, but we actually had a blast. Hopefully the other trips we have planned this summer will but just as fun but a little more safe.