A Friendly Campout

Last Friday night we decided to be adventurous and take our kids on a camping trip to Hanna Park with few of our friends. Hanna Park is one our favorite parks to visit because it is right on the beach and they have several playgrounds, a lake for paddle boating, and lots of biking trails. Nathan of course brought his new mountain bike and took it on a few of the trails. He said they were pretty tough and I’ll have to say he was breathing pretty darn hard when he got back off of one of them. I think he might be a little out of shape. But then, so am I. No that’s not true. I am a whole lot more than just a “little” out of shape.

The camp sites were small, but nice. Well, nice except for the dirt. It was this black dirt covered with leaves, but NO GRASS. So Nathan and I actually held Layton (whether he liked it or not) almost the whole time and only let him crawl around inside the tent. He loved that though. He thought the bouncy blow up beds were awesome to play on.

We arrived fairly early Friday afternoon and set up camp. Dallin loves being a helper and he helped Nathan do all the work while I held Layton. Mandy was so excited for her “girls” to get there. I told her that Julia was coming and she clasped her hands together and said in her breathy excited overly dramatic voice “Oh, I SOOOO love Julia.” Then I told her that Maizie was coming and she again dramatized saying “Oh, I SOOOO love Maizie.” Then I told her that Millie was coming and I swear the drama was just dripping from her as her eyes rolled back in her head and she exclaimed, “Oh, I SOOOOOOOOOOOO love Millie.” She is going to be an actress when she grows up.

After everyone arrived and the kids played a couple of rounds of keep-away, we took a little walk down to the beach. The weather was so odd Friday evening and Saturday morning. It was foggy and so thick that the moisture would collect on the leaves in the trees overhead and when the wind would blow big droplets would fall down, as though it was raining. It wasn’t cold exactly, just a little chilly. It made the campfires very enjoyable and made us happy to have warm sleeping bags to sleep in.

The s’mores cupcakes were a big hit. But really, can you go wrong with chocolate and roasted marshmallows? Roasted marshmallows could make dirt taste good.

We really had a wonderful time. Especially the kids. They loved being able to wonder between the four campsites and constantly have friends around them to play with. The only downside to the whole trip for me was at about 4:00 in the morning Layton woke up and I couldn’t get him to go back to sleep in his pack-n-play. So I had to let him sleep with me. And lets just say that Layton is not exactly an easy child to sleep with. He was constantly moving all over me, so I ended up not getting all that much sleep, but that’s ok. It could have been worse, right? He could have woken up even earlier than that and I could have gotten even less sleep.

By the time we made it home, Nathan and I were exhausted. It is a lot of work to go camping. And extremely dirty. This is the very first activity that went on at our house immediately upon arrival:

You know you don’t really appreciate how wonderful baths are until you have to go without one for a little while. I think we were all really happy to be clean again!!