The First (and Only?) Camping Trip of the Season

This weekend marked the first family camping trip of the season.

It also might be the only camping trip of the season. . . .

1. Camping with an 18-month-old is a lot of work.

2. Camping with 14 other family members is a lot of work.

3. Camping in June in cold weather is just plain tiring.

4. Will we really want to brave this again once we have Ethan plus a newborn?

The first day required checking out the campground and getting everything set up. We had reserved a great group site that had lots of picnic tables and a nice grassy area for the kids to play. My parents also had one of the cabins, where we thought we could go if the weather was bad or if we needed an easier place to cook.

Tim and I were a good team. As we were getting ready to leave Friday morning, it was raining pretty hard. Ethan saw some water falling from a gutter on the corner of our house, and exclaimed "Wa wa!" He hurried downstairs and I thought Tim was watching him. Pretty soon, Tim wondered where Ethan was--he had snuck out the door that wasn't latched all the way and had gone directly out to that corner of the house that was dripping all the water. There Ethan was standing, alone in the front yard in the rain, pointing at the roof and saying "Wa-wa! Wa-wa! Wa-wa!" over and over again.

Thus, we knew we were going to have to watch this kid every second of the weekend. It's so much easier when we're home because he knows the places he can and can't go (usually), and we have a fenced in back yard. Tim and I agreed that we had to make sure one of us was definitely watching him all the time. That meant that I was in charge of Ethan while Tim set up all our camping stuff. This was almost enough to send him over the edge; we had a new tent and it most definitely took more than one person to set it up. Ethan helped a little, but he was just too excited about all the new places to go to stay focused on a silly tent.

Here's some of my family once we had started cooking dinner. . . Tristan, Tairika, Jaric, Grandpa, Ethan, Grandma.

Jagger, Jaric, and Tairika were a hit for Ethan. They helped keep him occupied and he loved being entertained and being entertaining.

I guess at one point Ethan was being silly and his uncle Jon made a scary face and said something like, "Hey, what are you doing?" and Ethan looked around at everyone and said "Uh-oh!"

"Ba, ba, ba ba, ba, ba!" Tairika and Jaric liked to imitate Ethan.

Saturday morning my mom and dad and Ethan and I went for a walk up a dirt road. Ethan loves his Grandpa! It wasn't that far of a walk, but my dad and I each had to take a turn carrying Ethan.

Here we are trying to get that fire going. The most common phrases of the weekend were "I'm cold," "Let's make a fire," and "I think the smoke is following me." I didn't really think it was all that cold, but then again I'm pregnant, and I was following around an 18-month old the entire time.

Here's Ethan and Jaric playing together.
Tim and I went swimming several times on Saturday, despite the cold. The water actually warmed us up. Ethan loved swimming (sorry--no pictures). Most of the time he wanted to play with the basketballs and try to shoot them in the hoop, but he also enjoyed the little slide and he actually got the hang of paddling his arms as we pushed him around on his belly.

Below is Starr with Jaric and Baby Lincoln.

Here's my dad showing everyone how Jagger can "read his mind." My dad has always had these little games and tricks that make him look like he's magic. My niece Celia's boyfriend was with us for the day and he was such a good sport. I'm not sure if he ever figured this one out, but I commend him for trying.

Ethan with his Uncle Jon.
All the boys. . . I love that Ethan is actually sitting still for the picture. . . for the first time the entire weekend. He wanted to be like the big boys (or he was just too tired to move any more).

And finally, when we got home, Ethan took a 4-hour nap, and then enjoyed playing with all his toys without having mom and dad follow him everywhere he went. It was great.

So the question remains. . . will we ever go camping again? There were times this weekend when I considered the fact that this is just so tiring and so much work, and I asked myself whether it really is any fun. I guess I did have a lot of fun. The weather didn't ruin it for me at all, although a bit more warmth and sunshine might have been nice. I just didn't like hearing my mom say, "I'm chilled to the bone" every five minutes. ha ha.

But the alternative to all this work and exhaustion would be staying home all the time, and what fun would that be? How valuable it is for the kid's to have this experience of being in the outdoors and trying something new and being around cousins. Most of my family's favorite memories are when we were camping, even if there were times that our clothes froze to the clothesline (so I'm told) or we had to pack up in the middle of the night because the river would carry our camper away like a boat.

Time will tell whether we will get another camping experience this season, however. Most of our weekends are occupied for this month, and I might just have to stick around town in July in case the baby decides to make an entrance. . . but I really don't think that's going to be until later in July, so maybe we need to squeeze one more close little trip in, just to keep things interesting. Hey, wouldn't that be an exciting story to say that I went into labor when we were camping!