High Adventure

The following week, my middle three kids all had high adventure!  For the boys, this meant a three-day trip canoeing down the James River.  Neither Craig nor I had anything to do with this, but the pictures (which I'll share below) looked like they had a great time!  And for Kendra, this meant an overnighter that they ended with a float down the James!  The YW leadership had a bit of a problem where one of their leaders suddenly realized she needed to leave early, so they asked if I could come along for the float, which I agreed to do.  Then they figured out that leader needed to leave even earlier than they thought, and they asked if I could get there first thing in the morning.  That felt like a bait and switch, but I didn't really feel like I could say no.  So I had to be at a Richmond camp site an hour away from me at 7am on a Saturday.  Lame.  I rolled out of bed super early and drove there, helped make breakfast, urged the girls to take down their tents and get packed up, and get outta there.  We were supposed to go hiking, but the girls were slow and we ran out of time for that.  (It was very hot, I was not sad to skip the hike, and neither were the girls.)

We moved to the put-in location and I got the girls to get their tubes all inflated and eventually we got in the river and proceeded with our float!  I did this a few years before for my friend Josephine's birthday.  That time, the river water was very low, so it was moving incredibly slowly.  I remember really enjoying the first couple of hours, and then getting more and more miserable the longer it went on-- five hours total!  By the end I was bored, exhausted and so sunburned.  This wasn't a whole lot better, but at least we put in further down on the river, so I think it ended up taking three hours?  Maybe more.  I don't know.  I also was much better about wearing my sun hat, rash guard, and reapplying sunscreen, so I did NOT burn.  And it was at least relaxing enough that I fell asleep for a few minutes, which was pretty great.  Right at the end, it suddenly started pouring on us, so Kendra and I hurried to the landing site, where Wendy was there to meet us with my van.  (Which Amy had thought we wouldn't need, but I was smart and ignored her on that count.)  

That was when I realized that the van was full with the girls' stuff, so there was nowhere to put the innertubes!  The rest of the girls were still floating down the river, so I told Kendra we'd be back as soon as we could, and Wendy and I drove back to where she'd left her car and retrieved that.  The girls, meanwhile, were having a blast splashing each other under the bridge.  I had a hard time getting them OUT of the river!  But I'm glad they had fun!

It was a long day, and I didn't take any pictures.  Amy took this fabulous picture of me right before I realized she was doing it:

I swear I was having more fun than it looks like here!

A few of the girls wading-- the river was so shallow!

And here are pictures from the boys' trip!

On the bus heading to their start out spot

Ryder and Gideon sharing a canoe

Colton and Calvin sharing one, with Cedric in a kayak behind them

Yup, definitely having fun together!

And they got pizza right before coming home!

Meanwhile, we had Jason visiting, so we decided to have a Smith temple trip all together!

And that was lovely, of course!