Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Paela and her cousin Thomas both shared a first camping trip this weekend. It started off later than we would have liked, but these things usually do. We went to Lehi Park, which is a little over an hour away towards Santa Cruz.

When we arrived, it was dark, but car lights helped us set up camp as usual and we had plenty of snacks to enjoy while the tin foil dinners cooked in the campfire Karl and Wayne started for us. It was a little chilly...maybe in the low 40s, so Paela and Thomas were both wrapped up warm and snugly. I felt Paela's toes when she finally woke up 8 hours later and she was plenty warm enough! That's right...she loved camping so much that she slept a full eight hours in a row, plus another three hours after that. It was lovely. Don't worry...I'll do my best not to expect this type of performance every night. It was just a teaser, to be sure.

We had a fun time with Karl and Angela after the babies went to sleep daydreaming about possible trips we could take, and woke up almost early enough to make the Primary activity the next morning. Almost. It was a perfect first camping trip, minus a few things we forgot: camping chairs (there were picnic tables at least), utensils (eating tin foil dinners with fingers and marshmallow roasters...mmm...), bigger marshmallows (roasting the mini's, excellent), and not to let the car lights do too much of the lighting for us (at least only one of the cars needed to be jumped the next morning!).

We caught the tail end of the Primary activity Saturday morning, and went home to recover, clean house, go to Costco, and make it to my third of four sessions for the cake decorating class. I don't know that I see a future for myself making Wilton roses, but I do like the other techniques and decorations I've learned in the class so far.

The rest of the week was spent with me at work and Wayne taking care of Paela. He even managed to take her to a meeting on Friday on campus. Wayne is doing a great job taking care of Paela and convincing her to eat and sleep and getting lots of fun smiles when she wakes up from naps ("Good morning, sweet pea!"). And I am now working for a new team at work. I'm also told working from home won't be allowed as consistently as I had planned since the new team needs me there for planning meetings all the time. And so I will be taking a little more maternity leave dispersed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and going in to the office Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Not exactly what we had planned, but we'll roll with the punches.