Are We Home Yet?

I haven’t been around much this past week as we decided to go camping for three days.  Fortunately, we had good weather and it seems like the summer is finally here. 

Camping was a mixed bag.  For the most part it was fun but it’s rather unfortunate that so much fun goes hand in hand with so much stress.  We tried our best to pack light and I think we succeeded but we ended up being behind schedule because all the prep work we had planned to do Monday didn’t exactly go as planned.  

If ever we had one of those notoriously disasterous Mondays this was the one.  Nothing went right at all.  Hubs left for work before I had come downstairs and he forgot to take my Amazon orders with him.  They absolutely needed to be shipped before we left for camping so I got the kids dressed only to discover my keys were  missing. Now I hate, HATE, hunting for things.  It drives me crazy.  After about 15 minutes of searching I called hubs because he was the last one to use my keys.  He doesn’t recall what he did with them.  Argh.  So we searched some more and by this time mommy was starting to lose it.  All three kids swore up and down that they didn’t take my keys.  I had so much stuff I needed to get done today and the stuff had to be shipped by 11 so finally I gave up and we walked to the store. 

My keys, I finally found them at midnight stuck down the cushions in the middle of the couch.  We had already searched the couches but I guess I hadn’t stuck my hand deep enough.  The only way my keys could have gotten in there is by one of the three monsters known as my children.  Arg.

So a little behind we arrive at the campsite ready to put stress behind us and just have some fun.  Which is where I realized I was sadly mistaken.  THERE IS NO RELAXING when you’re a parent.  It’s can we go in the pool, can we go bike riding, can we get ice cream, I’m hungry, I’m bored.  No matter what we were in the middle of doing the kids were three steps ahead of us onto the next thing.

We specifically went to a private campground because it had a pool and playground.  We even handpicked our site the week before so we’d get a spot right across from the playground.  See we’re so smart.  Only we had the hottest three days of summer we’ve had so far and while it was a perfect keep your eye on the kids camp spot, it was also the only non shady site in the entire campground. 

And of course, since we packed light, we didn’t bring any extra things like a pop up gazebo thing to go over the picnic table. Did I happen to mention we were tenting?  So we baked.  My back is still sensitive to the sunlight days later.  Yes, I used sunscreen but when following three kids, who don’t seem to burn at all, around a campground to every non shady activity they could possibly find, makes it a little difficult to avoid getting burned.  Especially when hubby takes both sets of keys with him when he goes to pick up E from her craft activity so I can’t get in the van to get the sunscreen. Because, “Oh BTW, please pack up your stuff whenever you’re not at your site because we have people going around stealing stuff.”  Guess they didn’t want to put that in the brochure, huh?

By day three, I was beyond caring what I looked like as I sat huddled in my camp chair holding one of the kids brightly colored swimming towels over my head in a tent like fashion.  The only good thing to getting burned was that it actually made me want to get into my bathing suit (shudder) and jump in the pool with the kids. 

Two big accomplishments this camping trip was that J and O both learned to ride their bikes without their training wheels.  It was a little hard for E to see her brother and sister master something at a younger age that she didn’t learn until she was almost 8. Although most of the blame for that lies with us as we hadn’t taken the time to practice with her. 

I have to say I enjoyed camping, probably because of the daily walks to the ice cream store, but I can’t say that I’m all that eager to repeat the experience. It’s just so much packing and unpacking and while I love setting up camp, I can’t stand the constant nagging we get from the kids until we’re done.  That alone I think had me completely drained by the last day and I was more than ready to go home.  For those that say tenting is the only way to go part of me agrees but the other part (the lazy part) wishes we had a trailer.

In fact we were supposed to stay for supper but I had hubby packing up after lunch.  Of course, we had to go for one last ice cream cone.