Camping with Kids

We are home.  We survived!  It was fun!  But man, am I tired. 

We had a great time.  The weather was beautiful, the kids both slept pretty well, and we just had a good time being together. 

I was so worried about how Ingrid would do at night, but she was great.  She had a hard time getting to sleep the first night, but once she slept, she slept hard.  Until 5am when the sun came up and she was up chattering away to herself, waking us all up.  Sigh...

She did so well, though.  She loved to putter around the campsite and play with sticks, sing songs, dance, and of course, eat.  Marshmallows are the best camp treat! 

Otis was also great.  He hates the car so he was more than happy to get out of it and enjoy the nature.  We layed him on a blanket amidst all the bugs and he just stared at the trees and babbled.  He recently found his feet so most of the time he was just sitting there eating his toes. 

We played at the park, threw rocks in the lake, Brendan took Ingrid for a nice long bike ride through the park, and he took Otis on a couple hikes.  I just enjoyed being outside in the nice weather.  I had packed for cold weather, since a couple of our camping trips we ended up with frigid weather and not enough warm clothes, but this time we had a sunny 80 degree day.  Ingrid ended up swimming in her shorts! 

It was fun to be in this state park.  Brendan has been going there since he was a little kid, so he had lots of fun memories.  We went there for our honeymoon and first wedding anniversary, so we had lots of fun memories of that.  And now we are making our own family memories with our kids.  Yay!

Since this was such a great trip, we are really excited to go camping a lot more this summer.  And thank god we're in Wisconsin, there are a ton of places we can go to without having to drive a long way.  Another reason we're so thankful to be back home!

One thing I did realize is that it is a LOT less relaxing to camp with kids.  A couple sites away from ours was a young couple.  I walked by one afternoon and they were both sitting around the picnic table eating, talking, looking very relaxed.  I realized if I didn't have my kids with me I would have taken naps, slept in past 5am, gone hiking, gone to the drive in theater, and I definitely would have enjoyed nights around the campfire more.  Instead I was constantly yelling at Ingrid not to fall in the fire (which she totally would do, if you know her you know how clumsy she is...) and getting up at the butt crack of dawn, and wanting so badly to take a nap in the sunshine but was denied by a crying baby.  Oh well, we had an amazing time anyway!