Camping Fun

Every year on Memorial, Fourth of July and Labor Day weekends we go camping. This year was no different, however with the Fourth falling on a Wednesday, we opted for the weekend after for our trip. Maybe trip is the wrong word. See, we go camping only about 20 minutes from our house. Not very far, I know, but it seems like forever away. There are no phones, cell phone service is spotty at best, we're out in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere-a good 15 miles from the nearest town-it's great.

The land is owned by Andy's cousin Bob and his wife, Shannon. Together with their 4 kids, they come up quite often for fun times at the cabin. We join them on the holiday weekends, and some smattering of weekends throughout the rest of the year, too. Our kids get along great, we get along great, our friends that join us all get along great. It's just a lot of fun. Of course, it's also a lot of late nights, early mornings, headaches for whatever reason (ahem) and bug bites, too.

This year was quite the experience, having a 6mo along for the ride. But Mikayla is a happy, easy going baby. She was quite content to just sit in her swing and watch everyone go by on the lawn-mowers (the kids ride them for fun during the day-with no mower decks, of course-us adults ride them at night) or look at the birds fly by or dogs chase the ball. The only times that she got a little irate were her own fault. She would be laying down for bed or a nap, and roll onto her belly and be up against the side of the pack-n-play. That wasn't fun-for her or Mommy. It was quite the scream that would issue across the campsite while she fought the demons that were holding her on her belly. But all in all, she was a very good baby. She was also Mosquito meat. She's got a couple of pretty good welts on her head that we were unable to prevent in time. But it's all good, as she can't scratch them.

Lilly, on the other hand, can scratch them. She's been telling me ever since we got home that she's "itchy" and will scratch at the hundreds of bites all over her. Apparently she tasted so good that the mosquitos didn't mind the appetizer of Off Skintastic. I try to tell her not to scratch the bites or they'll get worse, they'll hurt more, her legs will fall off...I've tried just about everything. The only thing that works is putting a band-aid over them. But who really has $500 to invest in band-aids at the time? Not us! Besides that, Lilly had a blast. She has such fun trying to keep up with the big kids and she loves to play on the "tire fwing." She also loves eating outside for every meal, even breakfast! Imagine that.

Alayna was the little mother hen, like usual. She was very aware of Mikayla's cries and pleas for attention, was constantly asking if anyone needed more sunscreen, and spent a lot of time on her bike, playing that she was the mom going to work. She was never very happy at bedtime, but it consoled her to know that everyone else was going to bed, too. That also meant Lilly, which usually made for an interesting half hour of us yelling at them to stop playing, lay down and go to sleep. I'm so glad that they don't share a room here at home.

The only downside to the weekend is that the weather was close to unbearable. I'm talking in the 90s with high humidity. It was not too comfortable. Sunday was the worst, but thankfully that day was only spent partially camping. Not so thankfully was the fact that Sunday was also the day for packing up, which meant more ambition that many of us had.

And here's the last tidbit of info. I'm a prat (like my new word, HP readers?) and didn't take any pics. Can you believe it? I usually take pics of everything, but it's just too hard while camping. I don't want to leave the camera in the sun or places where it could get hurt, or run over, or any of the other odd things that tend to happen while we're camping. So instead of a picture, I'll leave you with a mental image. Imagine us all hot, sweaty, red-faced and dirty...There you go, that's our picture from 4th of July camping this year.