Camping Fail

Maggie's school is currently on fall break and for the past few months Grant and I have been dreaming about taking the family camping. Back in the day, Grant was a big backpacker. He would hike in with all of his gear and go for long stretches (long for me anyway - I am good for one night and that's it). We've camped quite a bit since we were married, but once we started having kids, the camping trips were few and far between.

Grant took a day off of work on Friday and we planned to leave right after lunch, hoping Finn and Carolina would take their naps while we drove. We went to the Stone Door, part of South Cumberland State Park, near Monteagle. It's a beautiful, beautiful place with great campsites and lots of trails. We LOVE hiking and that was the part of camping I was most looking forward to.
Well, of course we started off the trip two hours later than normal, which meant the kids were up two hours later than normal for their naps. Needless to say, they were cranky. We were in such a rush to get out the door that we left dishes in the sink and actual pieces of food on the floor. Ugh. We got there in good time and everyone did great in the car, with no potty accidents or meltdowns.
We strategized in the car as it was later than we planned, and I knew it would take a while to get the fire going and get coals to cook our dinner on (hobo packs with lentils), so we decided that as soon as we got all of our gear to the campsite, Grant would start working on the fire and I would get the tent up (and make sure the kids didn't wander off a ravine or anything).

 

Where we camped, you have to walk in about a quarter of a mile with your gear, which isn't a long distance and actually makes it more fun to me. I like that we're not right next to the car. Everyone had to carry something, even Carolina.

 

It took two trips but we got everything to our campsite. 

 

The kids had fun exploring right around our campsite while Grant started working on the fire. Due to lack of proper planning, we didn't bring any dry wood or fire starter or anything, and everything around us was damp. He could get a fire started but the bigger logs simply wouldn't catch on fire! (I have to note, in Grant's defense, that he can build a mean fire...as long as he has dry firewood!) He worked on it for at least an hour, during which I put the tent up all by myself! That's usually a job we do together but I was proud of myself for doing it alone. The kids "helped" and had fun threading the poles through the loops. At this point it was starting to get dark quickly and I was worried that not only was dinner not ready, it hadn't even started cooking yet! 

We made a quick decision to skip the dinner that I spent time preparing, and ate a cold dinner of bread, cheese, and apples. Grant rigged up a crazy little fire with his camping stove and roasted 1 marshmallow, and we ate the rest of our s'mores with unroasted marshmallows. At this point it was about 8pm, already half an hour past their regular bedtime. We hustled into the tent to get ready for bed. After everyone got settled and into pajamas, we read played for a while, then read a bedtime story and said it was time for lights out. Somehow we have acquired quite a stash of glow sticks, so we brought those for the kids to use. They must have used fifteen. Once we turned out the flashlights it was still very bright in there with all of the glow sticks, so I ended up hiding them under stuff. Here's Finn with a few of them.

Finn and Carolina were crawling all around the tent and refused to settle down. They were amped up and exhausted, which, as any parent knows, is a brutal combination. I am not lying when I say I got kicked in the face a hundred times. I finally told myself, "Maybe this is how Carolina winds down in her crib at night, by rolling around and kicking. Maybe if I just ignore her she'll eventually fall asleep." Well, it worked, but I was pretty annoyed by that point. I am a finicky sleeper anyway, so I probably got about two hours of sleep that night. At one point I needed to go out and go to the bathroom, but my fear of spiders kept me in the tent. Let's just say that may have added to my inability to sleep. And since we're on the subject of spiders, let's discuss. Have you seen Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, when Harry goes into the forest and it is teeming with spiders of all sizes? Well, we somehow pitched our tent in a daddy longleg nest. I have never seen so many daddy longlegs in my entire life. They were everywhere. I know they're harmless but I honestly think I have arachnophobia. By the grace of God (I'm being serious here), we didn't have any in our tent until right as we were leaving. But anyway, I was afraid to leave the tent by myself in the middle of the night thanks to those buggers.

Somewhere around 2 or 3 AM I was awoken by the lovely sound of rain falling on our tent. It was such a nice, soft sound. We had put the rain cover on our tent so I wasn't worried about getting wet. I just hoped it would stop by morning. (Spoiler alert: it didn't.) I was laying in my sleeping bag at 5:45AM, not sleeping, when Grant said, "Courtney...we need to get up. Finn and I are soaking wet." In our haste and lack of preparedness, we forgot to bring a tarp to put under the tent, so as the ground soaked up the rain, it started seeping into the tent. We immediately decided that we would just get out of there as quickly as possible. Everyone was awake, so we started packing up everything that we could. Eventually we got out of the tent and the kids and I started carrying everything we could manage back to the car, while Grant broke down the tent. The rain had thankfully let up at this point, so we weren't totally soaked.

We happily got on the road and decided to drive to Sewanee, a mountain/college town that we love to visit, and eat at a bakery we like there. It was about 45 minutes away, so we were ravenous when we got there, but we really enjoyed our breakfast and the warm, dry room we were able to eat in.

Grant had more realistic expectations about our trip than I did, but we've both decided it'll be a couple of years before we attempt camping again. And a sweet neighbor reminded me that even though it wasn't great in my mind, that the kids will probably look back at it with fond memories and gloss over the imperfect parts. I hope that's true! I think we made the best of it but still...

And now, to make this lengthy post even longer, here are a few random photos from the last week.

I did the popular top bun on Maggie last Sunday for the first time and I think it turned out pretty good for a first attempt. When I tried again a few days later, it was really fab. It's so fun to have a girl (well, two girls!).

The boys installed a new thermostat in Grant's car. I feel like this was an example of the really amazing parenting Grant does. (SEXISM ALERT!) I love that Grant can identify strange knocking sounds in the car, or certain smells or dripping fluids, and then fix them! He can't fix everything, but he can fix many of the problems that come up. I want Finn to have this same knowledge for his family's sake. And before someone complains that the girls can learn these skills, too, let me say that Grant is showing them all the same things.

 We have lunch most Fridays with my mom and as many sisters/sisters-in-law as possible, and we often go to Bella Napoli in Edgehill Village. Finn and Carolina would have loved to climb to the top of these ancient, rickety stairs, but we restricted them to the bottom third.

Last Saturday I met my sister-in-law, Kajsa, and my nephew, Jake, downtown to watch the Dragon Boat races. I really thought that the boats would have huge papier-mache dragon heads on them, but in actuality, they were pretty dinky. Luckily, we take the party with us wherever we go, and the kids had fun looking at the river, climbing up and down the stairs, and walking on some rails-to-trails unused railroad tracks, AND I got some cute photos of the girls (Finn was at home with Grant, not feeling great). Maggie is looking so grown-up these days. Also, have I ever mentioned how much I love my city? I heart Nashville.

Carolina kept putting her hands in the pockets of her windbreaker and it just killed me. It upped the adorable quotient by about a thousand.

Stay tuned for more Howard adventures! We're always up to something around here, even if it doesn't always turn out the way we hope!