Tenting It

There are aspects of camping I love.  Campfires, walking out of the tent in the morning and seeing your breath, the sound of the tent zipper, exploring nature around the site, cozy sweatshirts at night, making pancakes on the griddle, dirty knees and ears and hands and clothes....so much of camping is charming. Then there are the parts that I'm just not sold on.  Setting up the tent, SLEEPING in the tent (attempting to), not having facilities 10 steps from my resting place, mud (different from dirt), living out of the car...it's a trade off for this Mama.  I like it enough that we went this past weekend and will go again in August.

Our church reserved a group site 15 minutes from our house at Cherry Creek Reservoir, so we signed up. Friday night at 8:00pm we pulled in (this process was a total cluster but I won't go into that) and we were all set up right in time for bed (after a couple smores).  The kids were asleep by 10ish, which is pretty good in camping terms, and I clonked out right with them.  The next day we did a fam bike ride around the park, which was lovely. It's an awesome park with miles of trails to bike and run through.  Enzo and Squirt shared the bike trailer...might be the cutest thing I've ever laid eyes on.  We spent a good chunk of the day at the lake with our group and the kids and Tim lucked out with an hour of speed boat time.  Dude had his first official tubing ride (because pontoon tubing doesn't qualify) and came through like a champ.  His little thumb went from down, meaning slow down, to way up, meaning "go grown up speed."  Tim was so proud of him. 

 Luckily there was a tent assembly crew to help my husband.  

 The before-stated darlingness.

 Gwen and Joel and their uber awesome bikes.  This is all the kids did all weekend.  Ride their bikes around the circle.  Pure joy.

 Enzo quickly learned which tent was ours.  If he didn't see one of us for 10 minutes he would sit next to the tent and wait for us.  

 The walk to the beach.  Did I come within inches of stepping on a four foot snake?  Why yes I did.  Did I scream?  Why yes I did.  

 Sweet Anna allowed these two random girls dump buckets of water over her head for a good ten minutes.  

 See the tiny speck in the middle of the shot?  That's my tubing son.

And that would be my wake boarding, in heaven, husband.

We were on a hunt for a four leaf clover so Dude and Lucas could find a Leprechaun village.  Problem was, they both genuinely believed this was possible.  Dude is usually in the minority when it comes to believe fact over fiction.  Unfortunately, the leprechauns didn't reveal themselves and we couldn't even find the end of a rainbow.  Disappointing.

 So in love with this ball of fur.  Our little rug.  

 Where's Enzo?

 After 24 hours, these two became fast baby doll friends.  

Squirt, Enzo and I went home to sleep that second night, which paid off.  Everyone got a good night in.  If I have to camp 2 nights I will, but when my bed is calling to me from spitting distance, that's tough to resist. So I didn't.  Judge me if you will.  We came back in the morning for the church service our group organized and I was grateful we did.  As was Tim since I was able to help pack up the unbelievable amount of crap one takes on a 2 day camping get-away.  

The kids had a fantastic weekend roaming free, but the award for most fun had goes to our dog.  This is the life for him.  He was so covered in burs and pokies and bugs that we had to get him a substantial trim at the groomers when we got home.  Poor guy had way too much fur to make it through the hot summer comfortably.  We'll camp again in August and this one is too far for me to head home.   I'll let you know how that goes.