Our Weekend Adventure

We have been wanting to go camping for a long time since we haven't been in a couple of years. Last year I was big and pregnant and then we had Connor, so camping just didn't happen. So we were excited to go. The weather this summer has been so hot and humid that being outside is just unbearable. This weekend seemed to be a good one and maybe our last for the summer since soccer starts next week and our weekends are already booked. So off we went up to a state park with some friends.

We had some fun time hanging out and it was a wonderful surprise that one of our other friends went up there too and ended up camping at the spot right next to us. The kids had fun getting dirty, especially Connor he loved playing in the dirt, and eating rocks. He was always disappointed when I found him with a rock in his mouth, cause he knew he had to give it up.
There was a playground there so the kids had fun playing on the swing set and playing with the balls and frisbees that we brought.

We stopped and got some pizza for dinner on our way up and spent most of the day light hours playing around the park, and relaxing around our campsite.

Once it started to get dark we started the fire so that we could roast marshmellows and eat smores. Here we are roasting our marshmellows.

And of course eating them!

Bryson ate 3 smores and then decided that he wanted a smore minus the graham cracker, which was used more as a plate to hold the chocolate and marshmallow. Megan enjoyed roasting marshmallows. She kept roasting them and then would go around offering them to other people to eat.

After smores was bedtime. But not before a scary story around the campfire, which luckily ended up not being too scary (thanks Dave), we attempted to put the kids to bed. We had put Connor down first and he was quite so after the story we sent the other 2 kids in who then woke up Connor. After a lot of threatening and quietly yelling and laying in the tent with them for a little while, we just took Bryson out of the tent and let him stay up with us so at least Connor would stop crying and go to sleep. So we (Josh & I) stayed up with our friends and played Monopoly Deal while Bryson poked at the burning ashes in the fire pit (with a stick of course, which he then swung the glowing stick around in the air like a sparkler) and swatted at bugs around our lanterns. We ended up going to bed around midnight.

Night time was a little more quiet besides the chirping of the bugs but we all fell asleep. Everyone seemed to sleep fine except for me. I woke to Bryson having a coughing attack (which didn't wake him up), Megan having to go to the bathroom (and taking her), both Megan and Bryson hitting me throughout the night, Bryson even tried to steal my pillow. But our short night ended when Connor woke up at 6:45am and didn't want to go back to bed. We tried giving him a cold bottle, but he likes it warm so that just made him cry even more. Which was also waking up everyone else in the tent. Megan first who had to go to the bathroom again, then while Josh was gone taking Megan, Bryson woke up who also had to go. After I took him we passed our friends heading down to the bathrooms informing us that Connor woke them up too. Sorry!

(I was trying to keep him quiet and play with a flashlight)

Once we were all up our friends had checked the weather on their phones which said that it was going to rain, and with the overcast of clouds and the wind picking up we decided to start packing up. As we were cleaning up we started to hear the thunder and feeling some rain drops.

(The rain just started to get a little heavier on the bottom picture)

We hurried and packed everything in just in time for the heavy rain. So off we were to our house to make our breakfast, inside. Of course cleaning off our nasty dirty feet when we got home before stepping on the carpet.

Then we made breakfast while the kids played downstairs and we all enjoyed a wonderful breakfast, inside, out of the rain. The only bummer part was that we were a little excited about using our new electric stove that we bought after our last camping trip.

It always is an adventure to go camping. Except next time I want a blow up mattress to sleep on, I think that that would help me sleep better and not wake up every 10 minutes.
We are glad that the rain held off till morning, but were bummed that we didn't get to go hike around the park. I guess there always is a next time.