Camping

This last weekend we went camping with our friends and had such a great time. We camped at the boat launch in Desert Aire which Drew and I were kind of thinking was funny because we grew up right there, and we had really easy access to anything we needed with our families so close by. So it felt like we were cheating. It ended up being our favorite camping experience ever though.

We got there a little early and set up our tent (which was a little bit tricky because that first day/night it was pretty windy) and were just getting finished when our friends got there. They set up their stuff and started cooking dinner while I took the kids down to play in the water for a bit. I wish we would have had a chance to do that again because they had so much fun just in that short time. Dinner was hot dogs, grilled peppers, zucchini, and corn and it was delicious!

After some back and forth with their baby and ours we eventually got the kids to sleep for the night, and we spent a couple hours chatting by the "fire." (We couldn't actually have a camp fire so we had a little propane grill for a fire.) Parks woke up a couple times in the night for a second but I just had to pop his binky back in and he went back to sleep. At one point I woke up to Darcy kneeling right beside me saying, "Somehow I got over here." It took me a minute to figure out what she was saying and she seemed really disoriented and had a hard time finding her way back to her spot in the tent. That was a bit strange. Then Parks woke up at 5:20 to eat and it woke the other kids up, so although he would have gone back to sleep Ezra was awake and loud so he couldn't. So I ended up taking Ezra and Parks for a walk in the stroller on the walking path to get them away from the other campers who I'm sure weren't wanting to be up at 6. It was so beautiful that morning right there on the water and I was loving my walk, but Ezra was anxious to get back to our camp. When we got back the rest of our group was up for the day and we found out Melissa had driven the hour back home at midnight the night before and would be joining us again that morning. What a crazy night for her!

We had some yummy pancakes for breakfast and packed up our stuff and hit the river. It was my goal to be the first boat on the water in the morning, but some goal wreckers came and beat us to it by just a couple minutes. We ended up being second. :) The water was choppy by the boat launch, but we drove up river and the water was pure glass and it was soo beautiful the whole time we were out there! The river was low so at one point we ended up driving the boat up onto a little sand bar where we let the kids get out and play for a while. I loved that part.

If I could figure out a way to get a better night's sleep I could really get into this camping thing I think! Even with far too little sleep I thought it was such a great time!