Camping

Last weekend we went camping. As I was packing the car I thought, "How will we go camping if we ever have another kid and one of the kids has to sit on the back row?"

 

Notice the kids playing in their seats while I arranged the junk in the back.

Annie sat in her seat for almost an hour in the morning while I packed things in. Then when I was putting the last few things in in the afternoon while waiting for Jake to get home from work she climbed in again and wouldn't get out. She was soooo excited to go camping. Even though she had no idea what that even meant, having only gone once when she was about 9 months old.

We went down to Patagonia Lake, a little over an hour south of here. It was beautiful. After we got the tent set up and ate dinner we headed down to the lake to throw rocks in the water.

 

 

 

Family picture:
 

The boys:
 

On the way back to our tent Annie and Rachel put on their headlamps to light the way. Annie's slipped a little, then of course, when we laughed at Annie, Rachel had to join in the goofiness.

 

 

Ryan thankfully loved his little camp chair that I got for him the day before. It was the only way we could get him to stay in one place. If he wasn't in it he was wandering around trying to check out the fire, or go down the steep hill, or trying to find the dogs he kept seeing walk by (every time saying "Eese!"--Reese is my parents' dog, and apparently all dogs now go by that name). Anyway, stick him in his chair and he was happy as a clam, and stuck in one safe spot. 

The girls were excited to roast marshmallows. They didn't care that their roasting sticks didn't even reach all the way to the fire. 

They were happy to try out s'mores for Annie's first time. Ryan was not such a fan of them. The sticky fingers kind of bugged him. Rachel happily ate his s'more, and he enjoyed a plain ol' marshmallow.

Ryan was not a fan of the tent. I think it was a little scary for him. Jake got him settled down eventually in his pack 'n play, and to keep the girls from waking him up we didn't go into the tent for our bedtime stories. Instead we sat in our camp chairs and read. 

When it was finally time for sleep I went in and laid by the girls for a while in the hopes of helping Annie fall asleep more quickly. Rachel fell asleep pretty quickly, but Annie did not. After trying her sleeping bag, then our blow up mattress, then back to hers, we eventually tried the back of the minivan. She fell asleep around 10pm (two hours after her normal bedtime of 8pm), then we moved her back to the tent. She slept pretty well the rest of the night, only waking up once. Ryan woke up several times until I decided he was waking up because he was cold and moved him to my sleeping bag around 2am. He slept well the rest of the night. And I was once again reminded why I could never co-sleep. I sleep horribly with someone else so close by. Lucky for me I went into the camping trip expecting a horrible night's sleep, so expectations met, no problem.

Ryan woke up at his typical 5:45 am, and instead of leaving him to play quietly for a half hour or hour like I can at home, I was happy to give up feigning sleep and get out into the beautiful morning sun. 

Ryan was happy to be up and about, too.

 

By the time Jacob and the girls got up around 7ish, Ryan was apparently ready for a nap.
 

Too bad for him, he didn't get a morning nap like he usually does. He toughed it out and was pretty happy all morning anyway.

We had eggs and sausage and chocolate milk for breakfast.

 

While we tried to clean up camp Ryan and Rachel warmed up our beach toys.
 

And like usual, we get one picture of what's really going on, then Ryan looks up when he hears the camera and says "tsees!"

 

We went on little hike past the beach where we'd come back and play a little later, and along the lake to a big tall bridge that we didn't get a picture of. I was happy to see that Annie does have a little healthy fear built in and may have inherited a bit of my fear of heights. 

 

 

Ryan was in a daze on the hike. I had hopes that he'd fall asleep and take his morning nap while we hiked, but it was not to be. 

 

After our hike we packed up camp and headed over to the beach to play in the sand and water for a few hours before heading home. We also had borrowed my parents' inflatable raft, so we took a couple spins in that, but Rachel was the only one interested in going out on the water. The other two kiddos were content with the sand. Of course, we didn't get any pictures at the beach except of Ryan as he chilled on the chair while the girls played.

 

We headed home and within about 5 minutes both Ryan and Annie were asleep in their car seats. We had successfully worn them out. :) Of course we were pretty worn out, too. It was pretty fun. But I remember now why we don't go camping all that much these days. It is so much easier to camp without kids. A friend of mine whose 4th and youngest child is Rachel's age keeps telling me there is light at the end of the tunnel and eventually it gets easier.  Maybe then we'll go camping more than once every two years.