Campin' Part Two

Ahh, so much fun. Our second camping trip of the summer was for the Fourth of July. Jonathan took off work on Friday a little bit early and we got to the campsite in time for dinner. A hot dog over the fire for Jackson. He was in heaven. He cooked it himself. Tin foil dinners for Jonathan, Lucy and I. Speaking of Lucy and food, we decided that we were just ready to get out of the house and left her booster seat and a folding chair behind. Bad idea. She is a messy eater and one of us had to hold her at each meal. Some friends joined us for the weekend and they made it up late on Friday night. We went for a canoe ride that night after dinner. We chose this campground for the very fact that there is water access at the campsite. 20 yards (maybe more? I'm horrible at distances) and we were able to put in the water. In the meantime, the canoe made an excellent playpen for Lucy while we set up camp and got dinner going. She thought it was great fun to drop her sippy cup over the seat and lean down and pick it up.

This is our new tent that we got last summer (but only used once due to the fact that we had a newborn). We love it. It's lightweight, easy to set up, tall enough to stand in and large. Our previous tent was a two-person backpacking tent. Notice the large field behind the tent? It was the hangout place for all the teenagers in the campground (well, our loop at least). They played soccer there right up until quiet hours at 10pm. Then several of them came looking right up by the tent for where they had tossed their shoes while I was trying to get Jackson to sleep. I was coming up with all kinds of evil schemes to send our kids through their campsite at 6am. Of course, I didn't do that. But I did talk to the one family that was checking out (in one of the best campsites I might add) and called dibs on their campsite. So later that afternoon (after the mandatory trip to Wal-Mart to get everything we forgot), Jonathan and the other dad moved campsites while us moms frolicked at the sandy beach with the kids. Jonathan took several canoe rides during the day with various children. We spent the night in the usual way, eating dinner and s'mores and driving Jackson to sleep. I walked Lucy to sleep most of the times she had to go down. By Sunday night, my back just couldn't handle it anymore. We finally cleared out the pack and play, cracked the windows, backed the car right up to the tent and let her cry it out. It took all of 10 seconds. That's how we'll do it in the future.

We headed to the nearest branch of the church on Sunday morning. It was a small congregation and they didn't have a nursery for the two-year olds so that made our decision of whether to stay for all three hours or not pretty easy.

We went for a hike in the afternoon. We ended up carrying the kids more than I wanted to. Well, of course we carried Lucy, but Jackson wimped out on us. However, his excitement about going for a hike made it worth it. Maybe now is a good time to describe Jackson's favorite place to play for the weekend. There was a drain pipe that emptied into a grassy area that theoretically would empy into the lake. Jackson loved the grassy area where it emptied. An indentation in the ground. It was bone dry while we were there and had a small smattering of dry leaves and rocks in it. He spent quite a bit of time stomping around there. We had a sing-a-long with friends (because hootenannies are too rowdy for Sunday) in the afternoon after our hike. Lucy didn't sing but she sure did like the primary song book.

Mmm, a camping moustache. I base my decisions on what to feed my children (food that has dropped to the ground, a pacifier that fell out) based on if it would be any worse if we were camping. No one has died from camping yet (at least that I know). So don't too close at this picture if you're squeamish about dirt and germs. You'll find that my standards for what I give my children are quite low.

What I love best about this campground. Just walk over from our campsite to the landing area. Shove off and you're in the water.

Two ducks. No matter how hard the other mom tried to convince Jackson that these were geese, he insisted that they were two ducks. Two BIG ducks.

And finally, a month later, that is camping trip number two. Now we need another trip on the calendar.