Camping!!

We promised the kids months and months ago that we would take them camping this summer, but we put it off at the beginning because Zachary wasn’t potty trained yet. Then we put it off because this summer was hot as blazes and who wants to sit around a campfire in that kind of heat? And then before we knew what had happened, it was October!

The first weekend of the month was plenty warm in the daytime, but nighttime temperatures were pretty chilly. Jim and I went back and forth about whether to camp out in the backyard that weekend. We spent Friday night setting up for Saturday’s garage sale and still didn’t make a decision. All day Saturday we discussed it. Finally about 6:00 Sat. evening, we finally decided to just do it! If we got too cold, we could always go inside. If we didn’t do it that weekend, we wouldn’t have another chance until the end of the month.

So we, mostly Jim, went to work. I put the kids in warmer clothes, and they went out to help Jim put up the tent.

Daddy built a fire and we ate dinner outside. We roasted marshmallows to make s’mores and just had a blast! The kids LOVED it! They especially loved getting to use the Coleman LED Quad Lantern Bud and KayKay gave them for their birthday! It’s the perfect lantern for a set of quads because each of the four lighted sections detaches from the base as an individual lantern too.

It was no hardship to get them to go to bed either. They were thrilled to get to sleep in their sleeping bags in the tent and had been begging to “go to bed” all night. Luckily, they had had no nap that day and really were exhausted, so they fell asleep in no time!

Reagan and Jonathan on one air mattress

Zachary and Thomas passed out on the other one

It’s a pretty sight, isn’t it? After the kids fell asleep, Jim and I stayed up awhile talking around the campfire. It was a fun night for us too! Then we crawled under the blankets on our own air mattress, and it was sleepytime for all!

Now, it really was cold that night, but since we were right in our backyard, we hooked up a couple of electric heaters and kept them in the tent all night, so it was quite comfortable in there. Still, Daddy worried that the kids would get cold and constantly got up to check on them and cover them up. Me? I’m not the worrier. I figured if they got cold, they’d start whining, and I’d deal with it then. As it was, the kids slept great! Thomas was the only one that made a sound all night. At one point, he sat up and said, “Daddy?” Daddy answered. “Momma?” I answered. He was satisfied we were both there and laid back down and went to sleep. Poor Daddy hardly slept at all. I slept somewhere in between.

It was a great experience, but kind of bittersweet. My kids slept in a tent in the backyard. We CAMPED with our kids! That means…MY KIDS ARE OLD ENOUGH TO CAMP! It’s just one more example of how they’re growing up, which is both joyous and sad at the same time. I don’t have to explain it. All you parents know exactly what I’m talking about.

Next time…the woods!