Camping

We took the kids camping last weekend. I was so excited to cross off all of the baby items on our camping checklist . . . no more playpen, booster seat, diapers, stroller, etc. Camping with older kids requires lots less stuff. Unfortunately, it comes with lots more complaining, and fighting, and opinions. :) To be fair, they were really pretty good most of the time. We hated the abnormally excessive number of mosquitoes and Nate and I froze the first night, but other than that we had a great trip. We didn’t even get rained on (rain seems to be our camping curse).

Most of Friday was spent on the river. Ben and Emily both loved tubing. Elise oscillated between thinking it was great fun and HATING it. Abby sat out the first few rides, but once she started she was hooked. On the last run of the day, she and Emily fell off the tube. It was pretty traumatic for her. Emily was a good sister and held on tight to her until Nate could get them both back on the tube. Tubing with kids causes me lots of anxiety. I’m glad that Nate can manage all four of them at once, so I can just jog along the shoreline and take pictures as they pass by.







When we were driving around looking for a campsite, we were talking about all of the ones we had stayed in . . . the “raccoon campsite” where a raccoon stole the serving spoon out of our peach cobbler, the “moose campsite” where a moose walked right through our camp, the “cousin campsite” where we stayed last year, etc. As we were leaving, Ben said we should call this one the squirrel campsite. The little guys were all over the place. (You would think we could have gotten a non-blurry picture.) We had fun watching them eat grapes and part of the chocolate bar from Abby’s s’more.


The girls were inseparable the whole time we were there. It was fun to watch them play together with their imaginations in full swing. They loved playing in the little “secret hideout” that led into our campsite.





Ben was (of course) all about the firewood. He spent most of his time hunting down wood and sawing it into pieces. He was mad when we would make him stop to do lame things like eat or play a card game.



My number one camping skills are building fires and making perfect marshmallows. I spent some time on this trip passing on those skills to the kiddos. I still toasted Abby’s marshmallows for her, but the other three are as good as I am now. Everyone took a turn building their own fire. Ben took three turns. We’re going to have some quality fire builders in this family.