C. Ellingson and Co.: Ellingson Camping!

Okay, Katie, this is for you. :-)
I haven't blogged for a while because of various summer activities, this being one of them. We just got back from a half a week of camping and it was a BLAST! I won't post all the pictures I took (because it would take about 3 weeks for all of them to DOWNLOAD on my poor, bloated with lots of crap laptop...), but here are a few. We went to Salt Cabin Park up the Cache La Poudre pass and it was gorgeous up there. And free. Can't beat that. Chloe and Linus did great! This is Chloe's second camping trip, the first being when she was about 6 months old and relatively immobile still, so she was very content back then to sit in her stroller and just watch everyone. This time she became the Ellingson explorer extraordinaire. And got pretty filthy. She loved every minute of it, whether she was going on bear hunts with Seth and Kyle, rolling around in the hammock with Aunt Amber, stuffing her face with lots of fruit (which we all regretted later after we had to change her bottom about 10 times in 5 or 6 hours the next day...) or picking wildflowers for Mommy, she was always busy. Linus was about the same. As Grandpa put it, the wide open dirt planes all around camp were a glorious place for him. At first Craig had to practically put me in a straight jacket to keep from keeping all the sticks and rocks and handfulls of pine needles and dirt out of his mouth, but then I realized that he would survive a few meals of dirt and at least he was happy about it. He got filthy, but it was almost just like releasing the inner dirty boy out of him for the first time. I'm sure it will only get better as the years go on, but it was nice to see him have such a ball with something so simple! Anyway, we had a blast. If you want to see the many MANY wildlife pictures I took, head over to my photo blog at chels easattic.blogspot.com. I won't post them here so as to focus on the people!

These are all out of order, but I don't feel like rearranging them. This is Linus happily waking up at 6:30 a.m.! I love morning eyes....

Craig jumping over the fire. For the record, I protested. At first. Then he did it about 8 times, so it was clear he wasn't going to burn to a crisp.

This crazy WEIRDO who we happen to be related to is Uncle Daniel. Junior, that is.

Morning hot chocolate. Mmmm.....

This is my new favorite picture of Linus. This is his first time experiencing pudding. I gave him the cup and the spoon afterwards and he went nuts with it. Can you tell he likes it?!