We Came, We Saw, We Camped

THIS is how we spent the last 48 hours:

Hiking in the pines;

reading bedtime stories in the tent;

eating Ziploc-baggie ice cream with sprinkles;

doing sparklers at dusk;

cooking large quantities of meat over an open fire;

eating s'mores

and corn on the cob, and hot dogs,

and popsicles;

playing games in the dirt;

reading together outside;

riding bikes;

wearing inappropriately fancy clothing while playing catch with a football;

having dirty faces

and dirty feet;

and doing a lot of laughing, biking, swimming, swinging, singing, and just plain hanging out together. I'd call our first family camping trip a huge success. The fact that we all slept in one tent without incident amazes me, and it's not something we could probably have done before this point. We went with two other families and the little girls - all six of them between the ages of three and five - were in heaven. They ran in a pack from our site to the swings to their bikes to the art table to the bubbles to the outdoor games and back about a hundred times yesterday. They said, "Let's get in the group!" when a parent approached with a camera, then hammed it up with silly faces and tongues sticking out. They got FILTHY (the award for filthiest goes to Annie, who went directly from being sprayed with bug spray to go play in the sand pit by the swings and became coated with a fine layer of sticky dirt which gives me the chills even now) and were constantly sticky from some snack or another. Up until this morning, they played so well together the whole time. (This morning, though? Let's just say people were tired and the best personalities were not on display. Time to hit the road!)

On our end, a TON of work went into the 48 hours of actual camping time. There was the packing, the grocery-shopping, the food-making, the loading of the cars and campers, the tent set-up, and then the constant meal-making and cleaning-up-the-meal drama that goes on during any camping trip. I felt like I was going to lose my mind most of the time, simply because it was so hard to keep track of where things were. I'd set the camera down somewhere, or go to get a sweatshirt for someone but get sidetracked by a child asking for a drink, and twenty minutes later I'd forgotten where the camera was and still hadn't retrieved the sweatshirt. Today, when we got home, there was the UNpacking and of course the laundry (which still isn't done) and the way being in my house made me want to lie down and take a nap. (Best thing we did today, though, was go straight to the gym and swim at the pool before we even came home. Let's leave that nice layer of grime and filth in a lovely, large chlorinated pool and not bring it in our house, right?)

Let's just say, I'm beyond glad that we took this adventure (glad, too, that it didn't rain on us). I love that the girls will grow up knowing what fun it is to camp and I love having a weekend totally disconnected from phones and schedules and television. I love coming home smelling like campfire, having slept under the stars and started every morning by drinking coffee in a camp chair. But we're not rushing out to invest in a fancy camper or even a bigger tent, just yet. I think I have about one camping trip per summer in me. I'm tired. We all are.