Disclaimer: I'm still catching up on my blog!
For the weekend of the 4th, we, along with our good friends the Baumhovers, decided to make our first attempt at camping with our kiddos. We decided that, just to be safe, we would go for just one night and find a place close to home. We decided on a campsite literally five minutes from our home. Operation family camping trip began perfectly. The kids had a blast all afternoon and it was a beautiful day!
 |
| Claire and Liam hanging out |
 |
| Justin setting up the tent. My family went camping all the time growing up and had everything you could ever possibly need while camping. My parents are over the we're-so-broke-the-only-trip-we-can-afford-is-camping stage and so they donated all of their stuff to another family in that stage... US! :) So, we had this great, two-room tent along with everything else! |
 |
| Boys building the fire. We put the babes (Emma and Nora) down at their usual bedtime and they both did perfectly.. despite it still being light and loud outside! At this point, we were feeling good and allowing ourselves to believe that this might actually WORK and even BE FUN!! :) (Our expectations were low..) We decided to let the big kids stay up until it started getting dark. |
 |
| We did a little marshmallow roastin' |
 |
| ...and some s'more eatin' |
And then it was bedtime.. AKA: when everything fell apart for the Shoe Fam. Emma had been asleep in the pack and play in the tent for a few hours by now. We hadn't heard a peep from her. Now, to preface this story you must know two things. 1. Claire and Emma have never shared a room and 2. Claire puts herself to bed every night by singing and talking. So... I put Claire to bed and explained that she had to be quiet so she wouldn't wake Emma up. She excitedly crawled into the sleeping bag and started making noise. Well.... guess who woke up? Miss Emma Lou! For the next hour or two, we would get Emma to go back to sleep, then Claire would cry or freak out or start talking and wake Emma up. The pattern continued until about 11 pm. We tried laying with Claire, letting her stay up with the adults, lettting them both cry, etc... and NOTHING was working. At this point, we threw up the white flag seeing a sleepless night in our future. So, you guessed it... we put the kiddos in the van, drove the 5 minutes back home, and went to sleep in our own beds! Meanwhile, the Baumhover family was having the perfect camping experience. Liam went to sleep without a protest or a peep and they all slept peacefully.
We got up the next morning, drove back to the campsite, and all had a yummy breakfast together. Despite some serious frustration with the end result from both Justin and myself, we can both laugh about it now. :) In the end, we had fun but agreed it was way to much work to end up not even staying the night. We'll try again sometime (definitely in our backyard first!) and hopefully our kids will learn to be a little more adaptable by then. ;)
We had a relaxed 4th of July and just spent the day with our own family of four. We played in our backyard pool, went on a family bike ride, and grilled.
 |
| Emma in her red, white, and blue! |
Although we failed in the camping department, we still had a fun weekend.
2 comments:
Ha! What a fun story (now that you can laugh about it).
The last time we went camping was when the boys were 5, 3, and 1. It was a struggle to get them all to sleep, but we did finally make it.
We are going to try this year, but in the back of my parents 4 acres where they have a fire ring.
Same idea as you...we can always call it quits and go inside (or at least some of us!).
Annie--this post is totally what life is about in this stage with 2 little ones! Thanks for sharing about your adventure! The girls have been sharing a room the whole time we've been in Jacksonville, so I know the joys of celebrating a good night of sleep and the pain of a sleepless one!
Post a Comment