1st Annual Peterson Family Campout

Ben's family has a tradition of having a yearly campout at their grandparent's house in California. They have been doing it for as long as he can remember and he's always talked about how much fun these campouts have been. Each year they have a theme (ie, olympics, the beach, cowboys and indians) so as to have something to remember the experience by.

Well, we can't make it to California without great effort nowadays, so we thought it would be fun to start something like this with my side of the family since quite a few of us have ended up in Wyoming. We posed the idea to my family here and they were more than receptive (my mom is all about making traditions). Well, as of yesterday, the 1st annual Peterson family campout has begun and boy did we have a blast! For our first year, we chose to have an Australian theme. Let me give you a breakdown of how it all went:

(my brothers Jacob and Joseph trying their hand at playing a digeridoo)

Friday, 4pm--set up tents outside on my parents' backyard and practice playing on digeridoos. I'd have to say that Ryan got pretty good at it:) (see picture above)

7pm--dinner (fish n' chips) with pavlova for dessert, along with fried bananas, ice cream and chocolate sauce

8-11pm--waiting for the thunderstorm to pass so we could actually sleep out in our tents. Some watched Man from Snowy River to ride out the storm.

SLEEP (or lack thereof--it was so noisy outside because of the blessed wind that never dies in Wyoming)

Saturday, 7am--wake up

9am--eat breakfast burritos (eggs, sausage, hashbrowns, bacon, salsa, and cheese all rolled into a tortilla) YUM!!

9:30am--bounce house set up. We decided to rent a bounce house to go along with all of the fun that we were having.

me in the bounce house with Nathan and Ryan

Jason, Addie, Abby, my nasty profile, and baby Ryan's backside--or is that Nathan?:)

Everyone had fun on the bounce house. While the kids jumped their hearts out, some of the older kids went to try and throw a boomerang to see if they could get it to come back to them. (We tried to stick to the Australian theme as much as possible, with only a few variations). We had success! Ben, Jacob, Joseph, and Lars all got their boomerangs to come back to them. Good work, guys!

The younger ones made dot paintings, and then by the time we knew it, it was lunch time.

12:30pm--lunch. Barbecued pork, fruit salad, and veggies.

2pm--the classic TIM TAM SLAM. This is what we were all waiting for.

So a Tim Tam Slam consists of buying Tim Tams (which you can only find at a World Market in Fort Collins, Colorado because they are a true Australian biscuit). Tim Tams are YUMMILY filled with chocolate that melts easily when something hot touches it:). So you bite off one corner of the cookie and then the opposite corner of the other side of the cookie. You get some hot chocolate and suck it through the cookie. The inside of the cookie melts as the hot chocolate goes through and you then SLAM the cookie into your mouth for the ultimate gooey chocolate rush. It was so good! I think we'll be making another trip to the market in Colorado soon.

3:00pm--pack up and go home.

We had such a great time and can't wait for the 2nd annual Peterson campout next year. Anyone have suggestions of a fun theme? Thanks to Ben for getting this all started and for making it a wicked good time ('wicked'= Australian for AWESOME)