Girls only camping trip

 A few months ago, or weeks, I can't remember, we did a mom/daughter camping trip with our friends the Dartons. Johanna planned it and took us up to the mountains in Santa Barbara. (More below.)

This is the only picture I got of Cora, the poor little fool

 I love going on adventures with Johanna because she has eternal patience with unruly children, and she's up for anything at any time. When I'm with her, I find myself consciously trying to be more patient with my own children when we're in stressful situations. This was particularly helpful on this trip, because as soon as we arrived to the campground, my suspicions of Molly having a UTI were confirmed, and the poor thing was very uncomfortable all night. I've never had such a tumultuous night in a tent! I think the distractions of the trip helped keep her mind off of it though.

Cora woke up super early, so I strapped her to me and we went on a quiet hike in the morning light. It was chilly and silent she snuggled up and dozed on my chest. It was heaven. After we got back to camp, Johanna made a gourmet campfire breakfast and then we packed up and headed to some hot springs!

These hot springs were sooooo hard to get to. The road is long and bumpy. But that's actually a great thing, because that just means the springs are not crowded and trashed. They were seriously pristine. There was one jerky guy when we got there who was super rude to us for bringing kids, but I just felt bad for him that he didn't know how awesome it is to go on adventures with kids! And the girls were perfectly behaved, much better behaved than he was, that's for sure.

Evelyn fetching a stick like a puppy :)

After our dip in the hot springs, we changed into our clothes and went on a little hike. We came across some more hot springs, and these ones were more secluded, the pools were even prettier and more natural looking, blending into the scenery instead of just shaped like a rectangle like the first pool. And the water was not as hot or as deep. (The first one was too hot and deep for the kids.) We didn't bring our suits on our hike, so we just stripped down and looked away from each other! The sun was low, there was no one around, we couldn't pass up these perfect hot springs! I did take pictures of the kids skinny dipping but I won't post those here. :)

All in all a very successful girls trip!