1st Camping Trip of the summer!!

The 1st and not the last:
It was quite the trip! We took a bit of a senic route to get there, but no matter. It was a nice drive! Our campsite was AMAZING! So funny because as we were driving longer than planned to get there, we talked to the kids about just having fun anyway, and that sometimes things don't go as planned and that it's ok. Little did I know we all would need to remember these words......read on.......

Here is Sasha playing by one of the two rivers that surrounded our spot! It was just gorgeous and provided hours of entertainment for us all! The water was soooooo cold, but that didn't stop any of us from wading and playing around in it!

The kids really, really, really, loved having a fire at all times! First thing in the morning. At lunchtime. At dinnertime. At bedtime. FIRE!! FIRE!! LOL! They all loved helping getting it going and throwing sticks on it. So funny. Addie also wanted to roast marshmellows the whole time. So, I pretty much let her. Silly me, thought 2 bags of marshmellows would be "plenty". NOT!

We seriously had such a good time. Here is a picture I took to prove it. Thanks, Sasha for letting me steal your hat. I guess I DO like to wear hats after all.

Seth's face in this cracks me UP! Look close at Sasha's very nice lipstick. She offered me some numerous times. I declined. Audrey was such a good little camper! We were soooo glad we brought the pack-n-play. I "wore" her in a baby-carrier a lot and that was great.

Here is the rockin' tent my sweet dad gave Will for his birthday. He wanted us all to go camping and wanted to make that happen. Our little 3 man tent is no longer big enough. My dad slept in his van on a bed he made there. Sweet times.

Here is the river we had to cross to get to our campsite. It was so stinkin' cool! LOVED that!

Here is Addie going across the log bridge. No she does NOT have shoes on. She didn't wear any pretty much the whole time. Seriously, that girl. She also changed her clothes every time she got something on herself. So, she ran out of clothes 5 minutes after we got to camp.

We ended up leaving early due to Seth and his poor tummy bug. He got sick.....all.....over....the...tent...and...sleeping bags........at midnight on our second night. Will and I had a little family counsel to decide what in the world to do. I wanted to just tough it out and leave in the morning. Will wanted to go home. Our air mattress had just popped. Two of our five sleeping bags were "outta commission". (Read the first two sentences of this paragraph to clarify). Our tent was....um....yucky. So, we decided to pack it up. We got scared outta our wits by a HUGE skunk we interuputed going through our trash. It would NOT go away. Gross! I heard a noise by our table and we both shined our flashlights over there. It was soooo funny but soooo scary, at the same time. Will chucked some rocks over there and it would NOT leave. It was HUGE! I guess my dad had seen like 3 earlier that night, but didn't want to scare us! We packed up everything and it took us nearly 2 hours. We had to leave my dad a note telling him what happened and apologizing for leaving him to load the rest of our stuff into his van. (Our van could not hold what we had brought). I guess when he found our note in the morning, he thought about staying one more day, but the skunk smell was soooooo bad he packed it up and came home, too. That darn skunk sprayed the heck out of our stuff we had left behind and it stunk soooo bad. We spent the afternoon cleaning it all in our back yard. Will and I have talked about our little adventure and laughed about it all. We will never forget this trip. EVER! But, know what? We will laugh about it now and laugh about it later, too. We know our kids will take note of our attitudes about things like this, and we want them to learn to just LAUGH. Things go wrong. Someone might puke in the tent. Your airmattress might be flatter than a darn pancake. A skunk might scare your socks off. But, you gotta just laugh. We want to go again. Wanna come with us????