The yurt trip

Clint has been wanting to camp in a yurt for quite a while now, but we just never got around to it.  We're kind of last minute planners and reservations for yurts fill up really fast.  There was one reservation left for a Thursday night in March that he jumped on.  He took off work and I pulled the kids out of school.  He neglected to mention, until the night before that the yurt was just over a mile from the road and we would have to rent skis and pack everything in to get there.  I was apprehensive, to say the least!  Especially when we had to drive through white out conditions to get there.  The fresh coat of snow made everything beautiful!

 

We brought the sled for Lila.  She just isn't big enough to cross country ski yet. 

 Regan is an awesome little skier!  She loved it!  After skiing in to the yurt, she and Clint dropped their gear and kept going. 

Haden did the best he could skiing, but after countless falls, he climbed in the sled with Lila.

There really wasn't much room, though, so they had to improvise!

I'm really glad Clint is as tough as he is.  If it was up to me there would have been no way all three kiddos would have made it all the way to the yurt!

I was really surprised how small the yurt was!

 

 We had to make a trek to the outhouse.  Lila had insisted on being potty trained the week after we got back from California.  On the way home from dropping her siblings off at school one day, she told me she was tired of wearing diapers and wanted to wear panties from now on.  And she did. Out houses are so not ideal for newly potty trained little girls with teeny tiny bladders! I didn't even count the number of trips we had to make!  Every time she was perched on the seat, she begged me not to let her fall in!  It would have been really stinky had it not been so cold!

 Lila loved watching everyone playing in the snow from the warmth of the yurt.  Smart girl!

 Clint surprised everyone with new headlamps for the trip.  The kids love them and use them every chance they get! 

  All ready for bed.  The stove made it so hot in the yurt that the top bunks were completely unusable.  Until the fire went out, and we all were freezing.  Clint had to rebuild the fire in the middle of the night.

 I love living in Colorado!

 Dale had moved in with us the previous month and came with us on our adventure.  The kids love having him around so much!

 

 Dale has never been able to have his picture taken without making a dumb pose.  I have stacks and stacks of pictures from when he was little to prove it.  Some things never change....

 The next morning we washed dishes,

 cut firewood,

restocked the stash of wood in the house,

 and headed back to the car.

 Clint checked his email as soon as we had service.  There was one from the guy in charge of the yurts warning us that the lady who had stayed in the yurt immediately before us had seen fresh mountain lion tracks close by.  He was worried because he knew we had kiddos with us.  It is a very good thing I had not seen that email before we left or I probably would have cancelled the trip.  Luckily, we all came back and no one saw anything remotely resembling a mountain lion.  Next time, though, I think we'll bring a gun.