Camping

                   

  As usually tends to happen, while I take my sweet time posting trip recaps, life continues on.  Funny how that works.  So before Venice, I must talk camping.

On a random Tuesday, Mom and I decided to take the boys for a ride up to a nearby lake. She'd been told by some friends that it was a good place to camp. So we went for a ride through the beautiful countryside that I rarely get to see, and when we got there and explained to the ranger that we just wanted to look around, he gave us a thirty minute pass to drive through the park.

We were rebels and got out of the van to walk around a little bit.  Walking through the woods, at the edge of the lake, seeing the myriad of campsite choices, I almost forgot I was in Texas, and that's a good thing.

On the way home, I called Dan and told him I'd found the perfect place to camp.  Up to this point we'd really only considered camping in Arkansas or Oklahoma because in our opinion, (and admittedly limited experience) Texas is nature challenged, unless you count fire ants, of course.

It only took a small amount of convincing and an hour of thinking for Dan to come around.

 "Reserve us a site for Thursday night."

We decided for our first family camping trip, we better not press our luck. We knew this would either be awful or awesome.  It was highly unlikely to fall in the middle of the spectrum.

There was an added bonus that camping is cheap-$15 a night.

Although we did need to buy the tent Dan placed on The Colton Family Purchase Plan back in 2010. Ka-Ching!

And we did need to buy the kids some sleeping bags. Ka-Ching!

And we needed a new tarp.

And some camp chairs.

And some more flashlights, batteries, a lantern, fire tools, wet wipes, plastic utensils, about a million little other things, and of course food.

Ka-Ching! Ka-Ching! Ka-Ching!

 As the dollar signs flashed in my eyes I reassured myself that even if this whole (now slightly expensive) adventure went to pot in the first few hours at least we could use this stuff for the 72 hour emergency preparedness kit I've been meaning to assemble for the last 10 years.

So after a day and evening of shopping and packing through various states of chaos, and after soccer practice (ugh) we headed off into the sunset towards the lake.

Luckily there was enough sun light left to set up our tent and make the fire before it got dark.  It helped that Dan's tent is an "instant tent".

We picked a site that was not too far from the parking lot, the water, and the bathrooms, but tucked away enough to feel campy.

My parents came up for the evening.  My mom cannot pass up an opportunity to cook on a fire, and we were very happy to have their company.

                          


The kids were so excited about sleeping in the tent, they were practically begging to go to bed.

 We had anticipated sleeping to be the hardest part of the trip and planned to let them stay up until they dropped in the dirt somewhere out of sheer exhaustion. But who were we to argue?  Dan went and laid down with them.  Ava was asleep within 5 minutes, and Luke went soon after.  Max took longer.  Dan said he was running around, being silly, and eventually sat down on his sleeping bag.  He sat there for the longest time.  And then right before I said goodnight to my parents and came to bed myself, Dan heard a thump.  Max had toppled face first on to his sleeping bag and stayed that way until approximately 5 am.

At that point I had to hold him and bounce him and shhhsh him back to sleep.  Since our kids are forced to figure out the sleeping thing on their own pretty young, being held by mommy is not necessarily a naturally sleep-inducing thing for them. It works for the best in most all situations, except ones like these. He would wake up and cry if I leaned on anything or tried to lay down,  but eventually he fell into deep enough sleep that I managed to ease myself back onto the folded up, unused pack and play, where we stayed snuggled for the next two and half hours until the other kids woke up.

I didn't even mind.  I was so happy there in that tent with those peoples.

That's when I started my petition for another night.

Dan certainly didn't agree right away, but came around pretty quick.  Our one major hold up was that Ava's  soccer pictures were scheduled for 8:15am the next morning, 40 minutes away. And then she had a soccer game at 9:15am. Soccer is one of our biggest regrets in life.

And I'm sorry, Ava, if you grow up and read this.  But I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you that soccer is not your thing. I'm guessing it must be as torturous for us to watch your games as it appears it is for you to play.

I have held the opinion that young children don't need as many activities and programs as they are usually scheduled for.  I feel like in our family, I would much rather have our schedule be determined by us and not a games and practices, especially while the kids are young.  For this reason I haven't signed up anyone for anything. And now this camping/soccer dilemma was the perfect example of what I was trying to avoid.

Our lapse of judgement in signing her up was coming to bite us in the bum but we decided that since we didn't have to clear our campsite until 2 pm, we could just get up and load the kids straight in the car in the morning and then come back up at our leisure, later in the day to clean and pack up the site.

Long story longer, Dan stayed at the park that morning with the two big kids while I took Max back into town to get all the things we learned we needed (Ka-Ching!).

While we were gone, they went on a two and half mile hike and the kids only whined/had to be carried for the last 5 minutes.

When I returned, we all headed over to the beach.  The kids were in heaven.

My parents came back up and we enjoyed some delicious smothered chicken in the dutch oven, thanks to my mom.

On the back side of our site, you could walk right down to the lake.  The two nights we were there, the full moon rose on that side and cast its beautiful reflection on the water.

We roasted marshmallows and sang some songs.

We went back to the beach to catch the sunset.

That second night, Max only made it until 3:30am before he was crying, but since he knew the routine, it didn't take long at all to get him calmed down and we shared a sleeping bag the rest of the night. Once we got home later that day, he would spend a good portion of the afternoon passed out on our bed.

The next morning we were all exhausted, but we made it back to town for the pictures.  Ava literally cried the entire first quarter as she played.  But after some water and a little break, played her third quarter without complaint.

Soccer may not be in our future, but more camping definitely is!