The faces of Grover

We just got back from Grover and, boy, do I have stories to tell! It is rather late, however, so in following Elder Eyring's advice to never miss a day, "no matter how tired I [am] or how early I ... have to start the next day," I'm going to go ahead and post a little bit today (and I know I didn't technically write while we were camping, but I did take notes and that's just about the same thing).

Grover is heaven for mess-loving children like mine. There's rocks, there's sticks, there's dirt. There's sticky treats and sweaty feet and sappy trees and a dusty breeze and...all things dirty. 

And they love it. 

While my older girls have somewhat outgrown little kid messes and managed to survive the entire trip looking somewhat glamorous, their younger siblings did not fare so well. In fact, they're well-practiced, rather accomplished mess-makers.

Here are Miriam and Rachel, looking fabulous (in spite of having boycotted both showers and hairbrushes for the week):

 

And here are a few shots of the littler ones, who spent the week playing so hard. The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating:

Or, for those beyond shoving anything and everything into their mouths, the proof of the playing is in how much dirt one has caked to oneself by the end of the day:

 

We put Alexander in his playpen, hoping to keep him from eating too much dirt, and he kept smashing his face into the netting, which made everyone laugh (which made him laugh (and encouraged him to do it more in order to keep everyone laughing (he's a bit of a ham sometimes)):