Camping

We took our maiden camping voyage this weekend with all 3 of the monkeys. Mark and I grew up camping and camped a bit after we were married and a couple times with Kale but we'd never gone with all of them. Honestly it made me a bit nervous. 3 kids?! Tent?! Wilderness?! By ourselves?! Are we really responsible enough to do something like this?!

Maybe not but we did anyways. The kids have been asking to go since last summer but Jack was just too small. Chasing around a crawler would've been a bit of a challenge. Not that walking made it any easier but at least he could get around.

Thankfully our good friends, the Beachs, invited us to go up with them and some other folks, Larry and Marilyn and Chris and Kaylee. The Beachs and the Rogers both have big, beautiful trailers equipped with toilets and beds and sinks...wonderful! It was so nice to go up with experienced folks. Extra hands, extra eyes, extra entertainment, extra ideas, extra help...it was wonderful. Better than I could've imagined.

And we took lots of pictures. So many I thought I'd spread them out a bit. Ya know, bite sized pieces. Although they're big bites...

Here we are getting used to the camp site. Making ourselves comfortable cause that's what we do.

Jack doing what he does best. Explore.

Kate unpacking her camp chair.

Kale brought his drawing stuff and sat by the fire and drew.

So excited to be camping!!!!

Glasses were hard to keep on with all the running around.

Peek!

Popcorn on the fire

Enjoying the balcony view

I like me some popcorn

Even better with a bit of dirt mixed in

Oops :)

So sweet!

The Beachs had a play tea set. Used the entire time by Kate and Jack.

The kids explored, ate, kinda slept, played, talked, roasted things on the fire and had a blast. Once we got home we gave them a bath to scrub off the trip. The bath was brown and we rinsed them 3 times. But it was fun.

A few memories from our trip:

*The blow-up mattress that Mark and I slept on deflated completely after 45 minutes. We discovered the next day that it had 7 holes in it. Nice. Hard. Ground. Good if you're on Survivor. Bad if you're on a camping trip with small children and need a decent nights sleep.

*Kale got to shoot his first BB gun and bow and arrow. I don't have pictures yet but my friend took some. Hopefully I can borrow a few. He was in heaven!

*Kids and Mark and I got to ride ATVs. Kate kept telling me that this was awesome and go faster...like Chris! Kale just talked Mark's ear off.

*Kale, who I have told to not pee in our backyard and instead use the toilet twenty feet away, chose to, after being told that he could pee in the woods, go in one of the campers. Go figure.

*Trying to keep track of the entire tea set that Kate and Jack took everywhere.

*The first full day the kids got popsicles, cookies, strawberry shortcake and got to lick the cool whip tub. Then were asked later if they wanted to do s'mores (mom intervened!) Can you say sugar high?! By the way, they were allowed to do s'mores the next day.

*Kale found several pieces of wood that looked like guns. He played happily in the woods for quite sometime.

*Throwing the frisbee for the frisbee-addicted dog Dottie (Larry and Marilyn's border collie)

*Playing Spam-ball...

*Jack dragging his much-loved blanket through the dry dirt.

*Going to bed in the tent and discovering an anthill 2 feet from our door and praying that they'd stay out all night.

*Kate and Jack both yelling in their sleep waking Mark and I and all the forest creatures.

*Great, wonderful, delicious camp food!

An overall great first camping experience as a family!