What could possibly be more American?

So each year my side of the family all get together and go camping throughout the summer. This year was no exception although we cut it down to one-2 night camping trip. This year was so busy for many of us that the only free time we had was the 4th of July weekend and even then KristyAnn was unable to make it-yea I know you're reading this and yes we missed you! It's always such a lot of work and is exhausting and yet each year we have such a good time. This year our family and Lauras family had purchased camping trailers and were breaking them in. Good thing we did, there are a few things we learned which will help on our 2 week trip to Washington next month. I was a little worried when we got up American Fork canyon and it rained for the first two hours! (definitely a blessing to have the trailer!) but after that we had great weather. The kids had fun exploring, hiking, swinging in the hammock, roasting marshmallows and eating smores. The annual treasure hunt was fun-Laura and I had a blast mapping it out and were informed upon return by some cranky husbands and kids that we had been gone for an hour and a half! I guess we were just having too much fun without the kids!!! Anyways grandma did some over the top spoiling (great job mom) and the kids were on there way to the best sugar rush of the year -may even top halloween. They loved the treasure hunt but oh man those kids all needed naps! After the treasure hunt we headed to silver lake and the kids did some swimming and Ben/Payton caught a fish- pretty funny that Ben left Payton with the fishing pole and Payton put it down and left, when Ben came back there was a fish tugging. No one knows who to credit who but Ben was pretty excited- more than Payton was. How's that for a big kid. Later that night it was fried and eaten by almost everyone. What a great camping trip-Amylyn and Andy were able to come and Scott made appearances a few times -once with a girl!!! We were able to do our dutch oven cooking in there and no one went hungry. Although the kids were hoping for dutch oven popcorn- we may have to do this in the backyard sometime this summer. So saturday the 4th we headed home and cleaned up and to celebrate a little more we had Kentucky Fried Chicken and the kids did poppers on the back patio. Not our typical 4th- usually we go to the stadium of fire- but camping was exhausting enough and I was headed to work. Thank goodness pioneer day is just around the corner and I promised our kids real fireworks then. I think they were so exhausted they didn't even complain!