The Great Campout

October 11th, 2010 · No Comments · Adventures, Family, Parenting

I didn’t tell anyone (okay… except for my sister Caroline) that we were going to go camping over the long weekend. On the one hand, I guess it would have been nice to have people praying for us, but on the other, I was so worried about how things would go, I figured if I talked about it I was asking for trouble.

Well, it turned out that I needn’t have worried. Things could not have gone better!

Dan and I have talked about camping on an off for some time now. But, we didn’t have the equipment or the experience. It sounded good, but we were scared. The kids have been pushing for it, and we kept saying we would, but we just didn’t make any real plans. A couple of weeks ago, Dan suggested we should camp over the long weekend. I agreed, but that was the end of it…

Until I mentioned it to my friend, Erin. She and her husband had also talked about camping and she even had brochures for a state park with her.

A real plan was hatched.

She talked to her husband, I talked to Dan and it was a go. All we needed was some equipment.

We headed to Cabela’s, bought ourselves a tent, some sleeping bags and a lantern. I packed the car Friday night and on Saturday, after soccer games, we headed to Warren Dunes State Park in Michigan.

Our friends got their first, got us all a campsite, and had their tent set up by the time we arrived. While the kids ran around, the guys put up our tent. We then took a short drive over to the dunes, where the children drenched themselves in Lake Michigan and rolled in the sand.

Afterward, we headed out to dinner where we Bit Into A Legend.

Back at the campsite, we made s’mores and then had the kids shower (hey – it was a MODERN site for us first-timers) and then we put them in their respective tents and proceeded to drink beer around the fire. For about two minutes. Then Dan and I had to get up to beat our children silly nicely shush our children. Another beer. More “shushing.” The shushing didn’t work very well (go figure), so each child took a turn “sleeping” in the van. At one point, Dan and I thought we were done and were happily conversing with our friends and drinking another beer. Suddenly, we realized that those two crazy kids running around near our campsite, screaming like banshees, were OUR children. You’d think that in the pitch dark our kids would be afraid to venture outside the tent. Not OUR kids. No. Jack and Maria busted out and started running in circles around the campsite, laughing hysterically.

We put an end to that. Eventually.

Everyone (adults included) finally settled down and went to sleep. We might have been packed in like gerbils, but we really were fairly comfortable.

After waking, we ate a healthy breakfast of donuts, croissants, coffee, Capri Suns and Diet Dr. Pepper.