Purple Mountain Majesty

Ouray Colorado, a beautiful place full of mountain roads, hiking trails and tourist shops. A fantastic combination and a perfect place for a yearly family gathering. Three years ago my parents invited all their family to meet and camp for a week. It went so fantastically that it has become a yearly event. We have the perfect camping spot that could easily accommodate as many tents as we would ever need and my parents have a port-a-potty delivered for the week. My Mother cooks breakfast for everyone each morning and each family rotates cooking dinner.  Everyone is on their own for lunches. This has been an inspired way of handling the food. One kitchen and one cook leaves all the Moms free to keep track of their kids. On our biggest year we had 18 adults and 12 kids. This year was missing a few key families, so we had 9 kids and 12 adults.

We spent our days doing what we wanted.  There was no pressure to do what everyone else was doing or to stick together at all times. With a group this big it's hard to get everyone moving at the same speed. We tend to break up and do different things each day. I spent the most amount of time with my sisters Rose and Marci. We all have kids the same age so it makes sense to keep the kids together. One day we went on a hike to a nearby ghost town, called Ironton. The kids love to explore the old houses and walk around looking for treasure on the the ground. We had the unfortunate experience of having one of the dogs strut up to the kids holding a barely alive but still wiggling chipmunk in her mouth. A sad lesson on the circle of life. The kids hiked about two-and-a-half miles and really did a fantastic job of it. We stopped for a snack at an old mill house. They looked so cute all lined up that I had to take a picture.

I was lucky enough to go on a quick ride up Brown mountain with my father. It was really beautiful at the top and it got me away from camp and my crazy kids for an hour. I really needed that. I took Alana and had my Dad take a picture of us looking down into the valley where we camp. If you knew where to look you could see it in the picture.

We got to see some beautiful places.  4x4 mountain roads are the best. I feel bad for people to who never get offroad into the middle of things. There is so much you just can't see from the highway. I would have liked to have done more hiking, but McKenna got sick for our last two days and I spent them in camp with her while everyone else went out. I was sad at first, but then I sat in the hammock for 3 hours reading my book and I wasn't sad anymore.

Unfortunately I spent most of the week high-strung and at my limits. Alana was a dream and really surprised me with how independent she was - a bit of a bully but she still left me alone. She loved camping and was more than happy to be left to roam around and get dirty. McKenna played with her cousins nicely and was a huge help to me when I needed her. Evan, on the other hand, was a pain in my behind. Constantly nagging me for something or telling me he was bored and wanted to watch a movie in the van. He never liked the food that was offered so I fought him constantly to eat. I know I was being judged by my family on how I was handling him.  I could see them making comments just out of ear shot. Maybe I was being paranoid but I am pretty sure. I can't blame them, though. I was embarrassed by my short temper. I was embarrassed by Evan's constant whining about everything. In the end I am glad that I took the trip but I was really glad when it was time to go home. It was time to have Ryan's help in dealing with Evan. I was DONE.