in the canyon

 We live tantalizingly close to the canyon.  
We can be out of our door and in the mountains in three minutes. Seriously.  

Some friends from our neighborhood thought we ought to take advantage of this, and they have arranged several Monday night Family Night dinners in the canyon.

We round up a few of our friends, everyone brings their own picnic dinner, and we roast s'mores, of course.

Our favorite s'mores (so far!) are made with peanut butter cups, or salted caramel or raspberry-filled ghirardelli chocolate squares, by the way.

Here's what my children pint-sized dirt-magnets think of this activity:

 Would you believe it if I told you that this was seriously the best picture we managed to get?
Well maybe we got one with Nicholas holding still a little better,
but I kinda like this picture best.  
 If I ever make an "ugly pictures" family photo album like this one, we might use this photo as the title page.
Or this one:

Classic trying-to-smile-with-a-mouth-full-of-chocolate.

After only being up there for an hour or two, we pack up the picnic stuff, douse the fire, and load our dirt-coated, smoke-smelling kiddos back into the car and bring them straight home and plop them in the bathtub.

I can tell that camping this year (end of July) is going to be fun and very, very dirty.

We bought a year pass to get into the canyon, and you'd better believe we are going to try our hardest to be up there as often as possible.