These Two

Every baby should come with adoring older brothers. It's the best.

Caulder's 12th

Somehow, my firstborn turned 12. He's almost as tall as me, he can fit in my pants, he recently borrowed my cowboy boots for a school program, and he has to shave his mustache. 

Don't tell him I told you that. 

We celebrated on the outside, as we cried on the inside because time is going too fast.

Like all normal 12 year old boys, Caulder asked for a bowtie, a monocle, and a fedora for his birthday. Dude. He's so rad.

Look at all the candles on that cake! How is this even happening???

Right after his birthday, he got braces. Just to drive home the point that he's growing up and won't need us anymore before too much longer. Except, you know, to pay for his braces. 

We also celebrated with his two best friends: Braxon and Cammie. 

We had a pizza party, ice cream cake, then headed to the nickel cade. 

 

Where I spent all of my time here... Which is surprising, since I'm such a sweet gamer. I may have gotten crazy and played a game of Pacman AND Frogger. Those are the only games I understand. 

These three had a wicked Pacman tournament.

These two are besties. They had a blast.

We love this lanky, mustache-shaving preteen so much. Even if he refuses to stop growing up so fast. 

The Great Basin Campout

This summer we went on an epic camping adventure with our friends the Collards to Great Basin National Park. You drive forever through nothing, and then suddenly you see this:

It's such an isolated mountain that it's considered a kind of island, where wildlife (except birds) doesn't migrate, because there's nothing around for miles except desert.



We hiked and ate junk food and played games and - most exciting of all - slept in a tent. Packing for tent camping made us realize how lazy and non-hardcore campery we've gotten. It is so much work to pack for tent camping. It took me about 2 weeks to pack, and then Cole had to work some serious Tetris magic to get everything to fit in the back of the truck.

But the kids think tent sleeping is magical.

All 5 of us. In a tent. That's a lot of Botts in a small area. After the first night Cole moved to the adjoining "storage" tent because we felt like sardines.

There are two main hikes that go up Wheeler Peak mountain, so the first day we hiked up to some lakes and did a loop back down.

Cole invented the Backpack Buddy for Rand because the baby man hates sitting in our actual, really nice, super comfortable backpack where another human packs his tiny buns around and he just gets to enjoy the scenery.

He doesn't even realize that's basically a dream come true.

He quickly got tired of the Backpack Buddy, because, you know, toddlers. So we ended up packing him in our arms up most of the trail. See that smirk on his face? He knows he owns us.






Tukk as in heaven. This kid LOVES to hike and explore and run up every little trail and cross every log and jump over every stream.

This was our destination. I think it was called Theresa Lake. It was gorgeous. And freezing.

But of course, that didn't stop two members of the testosterone team from wading in.







That's a passel of cute kiddos.

Awww... that's a great looking bunch of exhausted parents.

Twist is a trooper. He can hike for miles, and he even had to help us swing Rand up the trail a few times.

The dudes hanging with Corby.

This is Gwinn. I want to steal her. At first Rand seemed a little confused by having girls around. He thought girls were a myth. But he LOVED having them there to follow him all over and take care of him. 

This cute little fella found the perfect velociraptor claw.

The scenery was beautiful.

But not quite as beautiful as this little gem, which Jenn left on Cole's phone while she was pretending to take a picture of our family.

This was at the Stella Lake on the loop trail, a little ways down from Theresa Lake. 

Being the boss of the universe and forcing your sucker subjects to pack you all over the mountain and obey your every whim can really wear a guy out, you know?

We celebrated conquering the mountain with a rib dinner. Ribs are Team Testosterone approved.

I went to the bathroom at one point and returned to find this happening. Sigh. Toddlers.

But he's cute. So we just let him rule our world. 

The next day we went to Lehman Cave.

Hee hee. Bright flash in a dark cavern = everyone's eyes are closed.

The highlight for Rand was the ice cream afterward.

One of the nights we were there the kids found a mysterious note anchored to a log with a giant knife. It was super safe and not at all concerning to Darrin and Jenn that their youngest child found it. It's fine. Just. Fine.

An old pirate had hidden some treasure up on the mountain, so the kiddos had fun doing a treasure hunt to find it.

The prizes!

The next day we hiked to Bristlecone Pine Forest. Some of these trees are thousands of years old. It's pretty amazing to think they've been around that long.

It was a super fun camping trip. And it only took us a week to unpack all the things we had to pack for tent camping. Totally worth it.