Our Adventurous Camping Adventure

If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a mom in recent years it’s that everything is adventurous when you do it with three kids- even something as simple as a quick stop at the grocery store. So, by all accounts, when you go on an adventure with three kids you are actually embarking on an adventurous adventure. That’s adventure multiplied by adventure. Which equals? An exponential amount of adventure….Heck, yeah, that’s a lot of adventure…. Challenge accepted!  I’m sure that when some people heard I was taking Josie, Jamie, and Johnny on their first camping trip, while 24+ weeks pregnant, they thought I was nuts. But clearly I’ve never been one to shy away from a good adventure…. Adventurous adventure, that is.

I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid. I would never attempt an adventure of this magnitude on my own. Rather, our weekend camping trip was well planned out and thoroughly coordinated in advance with my sister, Joanie, and her husband, Daniel. They found us a nice camping spot within a two hour drive at a little place called Thousand Trails that was well equipped with family- friendly amenities. Joanie and I spent all of last week swapping phone calls, making sure we weren’t forgetting anything. Joanie and Daniel made the reservation and provided the tent while I brought the food and fire wood, and so forth. After all, the secret to a successful adventure is preparation.

Feeling fully prepared and ready for whatever adventures awaited us, we arrived at our camp site on Saturday afternoon. The best part about camping with young kids is that, in their eyes, everything is exciting:

Stacking fire wood and building a fire,

sleeping in a tent (which Jamie lovingly referred to as “my hideout”),

The "hideout"

Afternoon tent nap

washing with a pump and bucket.

The boys spent a lot of time at this water pump

Most of our time was spent accomplishing these rudimentary activities. There was also a lot of sitting around,

Coloring with Aunt Joanie

 lounging,

Hanging out with Uncle Daniel

 and playing in the dirt going on.

Getting dirty!

 Probably the kids’ favorite activity of the weekend was our two trips to the campground’s swimming pool.

Maybe it’s the pregnant woman in me thinking with my stomach, or maybe its for the sake of nostalgia, by my favorite part of the weekend was roasting s’mores.

Enjoying a delicious s'more (and looking quite pregnant)

Ooey, gooey, goodness!

It all sounds like fun and games, but remember what I said about doing even the most simple things with kids? Yep. Adventurous, to say the least. Over the 48 hour period that constituted our camping endeavor we managed to amass quite an array of “incidents.” Each one has it's own story, but for sake of time I've been forced to summarize. There were three bloody noses and two vomit clean-ups, two minor burn injuries and three tick removals- the worse of which was a tick that had to be removed from Jamie’s scrotum- also two blisters and another two thorn removals, not to mention all the bug bites that were too many to count. To top it all off we had a camp chair catch on fire, I had to have my car battery jumped twice, and our tent almost collapsed on Josie in the middle of the night. Nobody ever said that adventures aren’t dangerous.  

But, needless to say, we all made it home from our adventure alive and well… except for the burnt camp chair, of course. We’re all scratching our bug bites like crazy and still recovering from two nights of sleeping on the hard ground, but I think in a couple days, after all the “boo boo”s are healed, we’ll look back at this adventurous adventure as a successful one. There’s no doubt that it was filled with picture perfect moments!