Easter: Lily's!

This past Friday night Mike and I joined Meg and Stevezie up in the mountains for some winter camping.  Our friend Chris's wife and daughter, Juliana and Sienna, were visiting family in Florida, so Chris came along with us as well.  We all brought our dogs: Paddington and Ellie, Greta, Emma and Nala, and they all got along famously, so it was a very good crowd.
Mike and I didn't make it to the campsite until about 9:30pm, so Lily was already being put to bed, but they had a nice big fire going and a bottle of rye whiskey at the ready, so we got down to the business of complaining about work and politics and other people in general, and then Meg brought out a couple bags of candy and plastic eggs and put us to work filling the one with the other.  Once all the eggs were filled we hid them put them in obvious places at or below Lily's eye level, then retreated back to the fire and had a few s'mores and some whiskey.  A big fat bright full moon started rising at that point, so we oohed and ahhed at that for a bit, and then I have a vague recollection of explaining to Mike what's currently going on with North and South Korea, and Mike made fun of Meg for saying things that Ralph would say on The Simpsons, and then we all went to bed around midnight, because let's face it, we're all nearing or over 30 and it was way past our bedtimes.

Meg had said that Lily would likely be up early to see if the Easter Bunny had come, so when I woke up around 6 I pulled on all my warm clothing, found the camera and headed back to the campfire ring.  It had gotten windy during the night (surprise) so I spent a few minutes restoring the fallen eggs back to their perches, and right on cue Lily burst from her tent and immediately collected the eggs she could see.  We all expressed delight that the Easter Bunny had found us and had left a great big basket of toys and goodies for Lily in addition to all the eggs (Rainbow Dash, a My Little Pony you can draw on, was a particular hit).

Lily wandered around finding eggs while Steve and Chris boiled water for coffee and cooked up some eggs and bacon:

The dogs all parked themselves right next to the cooking table, hoping that some morsel would fall.

...except for Emma, who wanted to make darn sure nobody stole her spot in the nice cozy tent, and grumbled at any other canine who came within 10 feet of her:

(grumble)

When Lily finished her Easter egg hunt, she and I went for an explore of the surrounding rock piles:

Lily is a champion climber.  She didn't want any help getting up or down anything, and when she got a small scrape on her hand, it didn't faze her in the slightest.
But she did feel she was missing an important climbing accessory, so we headed back to camp so that she could retrieve it and so that I could change into more appropriate footwear and also shed one of my five million layers:

Princess gloves provide good grip.

There should probably be a purple satin purse at the top of Everest.

Paddington and Ellie joined us for the explore, but the other dogs optimistically stayed by the food:

At that point, Mike finally decided to rouse himself and join us, so I got to fire up my shiny new Coleman stove that I received for my birthday! (Thanks, Mom and Dad!  Holla!)  It worked like a dream and we feasted on oatmeal and breakfast burritos.

In the meantime, Lily shanghaied Steve into helping her set up her new pink train/railroad thingiemabobber:

And then I was summoned to help decorate Rainbow Dash with stickers and markers:

(My butt is going numb.)

Then, alas, it was time to pack up camp and head back into the real world.  Greta helped out by napping on every available soft surface:

snooze

And a good time was had by all!