Last weekend was the 2009 Heritage Ward fathers and sons. If you are an 8 year old boy by the name of Toby this was a LONG LONG time coming!
About 2 months ago the event showed up on the ward calendar and Toby now able to read a bit homed in on that listing like a bald eagle finding a mouse in the meadow. I mean he probably spent the whole year spelling it out in his head in preparation, this is one excited boy!
I came home many a time over the last few months to "Dad I got the cooler ready!" or "Dad, I got my clothes in a suitcase!" or "Dad, I chose (Insert random movie title here) to watch in the tent!" I even remember one day, once we hit May and it was on the calendar in our room, Pam helped him to count the days (I think 27 or something at the time) until the campout and with this new information in hand, toby went and grabbed the ground pads so we wouldn't forget those!
This filled me with mixed emotions at the time, it's awesome that he is so excited to go spend some time with his dad, but at the same time I was a bit worried that I wouldn't be able to live up to those expectations, this is one excited son of mine and I didn't want to let him down.
Well, the short (too late) version is that I had nothing to worry about. We had a blast!
We headed up the canyon a couple hours early because Toby was determined to be the first ones there. Upon reaching the campground we drove all over and found no one we knew anywhere so WooHoo! We got out the Jarts (lawn darts for a new meeker society) which we bought a couple weeks ago just for this campout and commenced to play. We had a blast with those things!
We played for quite a while and then Toby decided he wanted to play in the river (pictures below). So we headed over there and both of us got in and meandered down the stream. It was just the coldest thing I think I have ever had my feet in I tell you what. I thought my feet were going to fall off and drift down the river. They eventually numbed up to the experience and we had a blast playing around there.
Once out of the water it was time to find the crowd. We drove around and found precisely no one we recognized. Long story short we drove back down the canyon to the correct campground (the same as last year) and got into the real fun.
We were still pretty early and had the pick of the campsites, but in true Toby style he wanted the tent pitched in the EXACT SAME PLACE DAD!
With the tent pitched we grabbed some grub, Pam made us some amazingly yummy tin foil dinners and Red Cream Soda!
I should mention that this year was much much better last year in my eyes. We actually knew some people and Toby even had some friends to play with there, AND Toby wanted to get into the baseball game which we did and had a BLAST! We both were able to get on base each time we were up to bat and we just passed some time with the national pastime.
In what is a new annual tradition after the baseball game we grabbed our monster bag of sunflower seeds and headed off to the bridge. This is no ordinary bridge as Toby can tell you. This is a special bridge, because this is the only bridge in the world where not only is spitting not frowned upon, but sunflower seed spitting battles are guaranteed imminent! Pam may not be able to approve, at least not in public, of such an event. But we had an epic battle and used up the entire bag of seeds! This battle outdid last year by a long ways and we even had some other kids in the ward get involved for a while.
The dark side of a Sunflower Seed Spitting Scuffle like this is that after you have had near a thousand salty seeds in your mouth, it is raw. Raw and watering like crazy! But totally worth it.
After the bridge we played baseball again for a bit and then Toby ran off with Corbin and Trey and ran up and down the hill for a bit. But soon, the call of Star Wars Episode II brought him clambering back wanting to hit the hay so to speak.
This was a really long day for me and Star Wars isn't a new captivating movie to me anymore so I began to drift asleep then...
!!!BAM!!!
Toby: DAD!
Me: What?! What?!
Toby: Dad you were sleeping!!!!
Me: Ugh, oh sorry buddy, what was that?!
Toby: (Sheepish grin) a string cheese...
Me: LOL! Hahahaha!
Toby: You gotta stay up dad!
Me: I got it buddy no worries!
!!!!BAM!!!!
Me: I'm up! I'm up! LOL
I nodded off a few times but man is that funny or what? Toby spent the evening beaning his old man with String Cheese. This was top of his list of what he wanted to tell mom when we got home this year.
Another year, another awesome fathers and sons.
Thanks buddy!
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