The Trip That Had It All

We recently decided to embark on a camping adventure. In my infinite wisdom, I picked a camp ground close to home, ya know..so if things went wrong we could leave. **Ahem**
Well, the trip was..um...eventful..yeah..that's the word...eventful. We woke on Thursday morning armed with lists and hopeful attitudes. Unfortunately, Adelae also woke with a horrible stomach bug. I won't go into details, but let's just say we changed panties a lot before we left the house and packed a few extra diapers. That should have been my first clue that maybe we should stay home. But, nope! Ben insisted that we go ahead with our plans. So, we did!

Thankfully the kids slept most the hour drive.




I should mention that an hour isn't nearly long enough for a sick preschooler to nap.



Brinna was really excited to be at the campground.




Thankfully, Adelae's stomach bug was fairly short lived (if you can consider 10 hours, 5 of which were at a camp ground short lived). She was able to play at the playground and make Twizzler mustaches by the campfire.




The rest of Thursday was pretty uneventful. The air mattress didn't deflate, the tent didn't come crashing down on us and no bears ate us. (Not that there are bears there, but ya know...kind of a concern when sleeping in the woods.) We did see a raccoon, but he was pretty friendly. At least that what I was telling myself when he was about 2 feet from me. I would have taken a picture, but I was too scared to move. I hate raccoons.

Friday was an absolutely gorgeous, if hot, day. We hit the beach, thinking the kids would LOVE to cool off. Other than Adelae screaming like we were trying to drown her, it was fun.


We even rented a paddle boat! The scenery on the lake was just gorgeous and so peaceful. I could have floated all day.


Given the start to our trip, I should have known that something bad was about to happen. Should have just KNOWN. Friday night the sky got REALLY dark and we started to hear thunder. I checked the weather radar on my phone and sure enough there was a HUGE thunderstorm approaching. After much talking (Me: We need to go home. Ben: no we'll be fine. Me: no, seriously..let's go home. Ben: No, seriously we'll be fine.) we decided to ride out the storm in the car. It wasn't a big deal. We got a lot of wind, a lot of rain and couple of lightening strikes. Ben and I had a couple of beers, we cranked some fantastic 80's rock and made the most of the storm.

Little did I know, there was another huge storm coming. I woke up at about 1:00 in the morning to lightening so close it made the hairs on my arms stand up and thunder so loud I thought it was the end of the world. The wind was blowing so hard that I was convinced our tent was going to take flight. Everyone slept through it but me. I kept thinking "Whose bright idea was it to put our tent underneath of two trees. Oh yeah..mine..." Luckily, we escaped the storm with no major damage. The tree that was 15 ft from our camp sight..not so much




All in all, we still had a lot of fun. We learned a few things like 1)don't go camping with a sick preschooler 2)don't forget the sand toys 3)take Brinna's walker 2)leave if the radar says there are severe thunderstorms. We'll definitely go camping again...next year.