Gone Camping

Can you guys hear me crying? No, I'm not crying because we went camping...I like to camp. I'm crying because I forgot my camera!! I can't even tell you all the times I said "that would of been a really cute picture" or " I wish I had my camera". I think I probably drove Doug bonkers about my camera.

Since I wasn't able to go over to Idaho this weekend for my Grandfather's funeral we were able to load up the kids and the tent trailer like we had originally planned to do before I had heard the news. It has been a while since we've been camping, I think the last time we went Doogie and Jayde were just little tykes. We are planning on doing alot of camping this summer. We just got a new tent trailer, well okay, it's not really new. But it is new to us and we got a good deal on it at Craiglist. It's not huge, but it works for us right now and it keeps me from having to sleep on that hard ground (that's never been my favorite part of camping) and now that I have sciatica and burstis this is a big plus!

I have to say that even though we did forget a few things (I was rushing around trying to get everything packed so we could get on the road before it got too late) we had a great time camping. Well right up to the end (and I'll explain that a little later).

The kids all discovered how much they like to go hiking. I had stayed behind with the two little guys to try and get them to take a bit of a nap (and I got to doze a little bit too). So Doug took the three oldest out for a hike so that we would have some quiet. I was surprised that CJ and Jaxon didn't wake up as soon as they got back they were so loud and excited...but I guess they are used to the noise! After that hiking trip that was all they wanted to do, so when the boys woke up from their nap we all went again. We also had fun watching the ants pick up pieces of food that the kids had dropped on the ground and try to carry it back to their ant hill. That kept us all busy for a while and then of course they had to try to discover where the ant hill was!

We ended up coming home late Saturday night instead of staying the night as originally planned (we got home around 11:30 or so). Jaxon ended up burning the tip of one of his fingers. OUCH! Poor little guy was hurting, we put his finger in ice cold water and Doug was able to find some burn ointment in the first aid kit and then put a bandaid on his finger. Then of course the only tylenol we could find was the ones in the first aid kit which are in pill form. So I remembered something from my childhood (I know a long time ago) where you crushed up the pill added sugar to it and took it with some water. Well we didn't have any sugar, so we crushed up the pill and had him drink it down with a juice box and that seemed to work just as well. We tried to get everyone down to sleep (the girls actually were), but I could still hear Jaxon fussing on and off about his finger and I was cold anyways so I asked Doug if we should just go home (which he had mentioned right before we had gone to bed). So we jumped up and started packing things up and getting the kids loaded up in the suburban and we headed back home.

So now we have a bunch a filthy dirty kids who all had a great time camping (well except for Jaxon's finger) and they all want to go again. They all really did do great. I think the fact that they couldn't run off to their rooms or watch tv or play video games made them realize that they needed to get along with eachother otherwise they would of been bored silly! It was so much fun for Doug and I to watch them play together, think up new games that they could play and also how they would just help eachother out. I'm just really sad I wasn't able to capture any of it with my camera, but atleast I will always have the memories in my head.