Family Camping

The kids have been begging to go camping all summer, especially the girls. Sam goes camping a couple of time each summer with Scouts so he wasn't missing it, but the girls really wanted to go. So we finally picked a weekend to take them. It's taken me an entire week to be emotionally ready to revisit the experience and blog about our camping trip. Ok, it wasn't that bad, but I'm really not a camper. These kids were though:

I had visions of peaceful family time around the campfire in the evening, everyone visiting and laughing and making s'mores - you know like a Norman Rockwell picture. We managed the s'mores, but the kids were too excited to be camping to make sitting around the campfire enjoyable. So off to bed they went. My plan was to sleep in the car, but I didn't take into account the tinted windows making it blacker than night should be or the irrational thoughts that someone might decide to steal the car in the middle of the night and I'd wake up to find myself two states over. So after about 15 minutes in the car I crawled into the tent with Chris and Jonas. I slept better than I thought I would, but was rudely awakened by Jonas beating on me, mad that I was in the tent that he was supposed to be sharing with only daddy. I tried to make it up to him by making pancakes and bacon for breakfast.



After breakfast we took down our tents and loaded up again. We had big plans for a hike on Saturday. Chris and Sam had camped a couple of times at Tenas Lakes and couldn't stop talking about how beautiful they were. So we decided to hike the 2 miles up to the lakes and enjoy the view. Everything started off great...



As we got higher up the trail, it started lightly misting and then it got heavier. There were a few tears and a couple of piggy-back rides required. Then we finally got to the beautiful and much anticipated viewpoint of Tenas Lakes:


I can't say that it rained, but between the mist and the wet foliage we hiked through we were all soaking wet when we got to the bottom. Sam, Mattie, and Lauren went ahead at a brisk pace and beat us by a good twenty minutes. I stayed with Quinn and we trudged along together. I don't know how many times I said 'You can do it - we're almost there!' (I don't know if I was trying to convince Quinn or myself.)



Chris got to entertain Jonas for 2 miles playing games to distract him. Too bad Chris had the keys and we all had to wait, cold and wet, for him to get to the bottom of the trail. And that's how we all survived our hike.


I've discovered that writing this post has been therapeutic for me. I can finally look back and laugh at myself and our weekend of misery.

More recently, Sam learned how to make lasagna as part of the requirements for the church program Duty to God. Doesn't it look delicious? Well, we had it for dinner tonight and I can verify that it was indeed delicious!