Camping

For my birthday this year we went camping with my family. It was such a great adventure and I couldn't have asked for a better birthday. When my dad first approached me about camping over my birthday I was a bit leery. I do love to camp, but I know how much work goes into a good camping trip and I wasn't sure that was how I wanted to spend my birthday. After asking Brook and the kids about it I knew that I had to go. My kids have never been on a real camping trip. Sure, we had set up the tent my parent's backyard about a year ago and camped out there, but I really wanted to take them up into the mountains and take them real camping.

The day we left for the camp snuck up me and despite my promises in the weeks before that I would get everything together early so the day of I would just be able to pack the car up and go, I ended up spending the day getting things ready to go last minute and if it wasn't for Ben going to preschool that day I don't know if the prep work would have gotten done.

After leaving only about 20 minutes after we said we would take off we were on our way to our camping adventure. We met my mom and sister and caravaned up to the camp site. My dad had left earlier in the day to get set up so between the 7 of us all going to the same campsite we took 4 cars! The campsite was really great and by the time we got our tent all settled it was time to grill hot dogs and go to bed.

That night Sabrina decided to sleep in bed with us and there was one too many people in our two person tent. I never sleep well when I go camping, and if it were not for our air mattress I wouldn't sleep at all. Between being cold all night since I married a cover thief and arthritis pain from sleeping on the ground sleep alludes me while we are camping. Ben and my sister seemed to play musical cot all night and switched back and forth all night long. Ben was cold because he refused to sleep in a sleeping bag and only wanted blankets. Come morning we were all tired and we still had another night to go. I was so tired that when Brook woke up in the morning and wished me a happy birthday in the morning I had no clue what he was talking about.

The day started out with my dad making an amazing breakfast and then my dad and Bean taking naps while the rest of us explored the lake, saw a moose, set up the canopy over the table, and triec to stay dry as the rain set in. When the rain got to be more than what we wanted to sit in we decided to all pile into our car and drive thorough Nebo loop and into Nephi. The drive was beautiful and I only got car sick once! The kids loved the drive and Ben even took a nap with my mom in the backseat. We drove past the house that my great great grandfather built and my grandma grew up in, and then we drove past the cemetery that my grandma is buried in.

By this point we were all starving and drove into Santaquin and ate at this amazing little restaurant called Family Tree something. Anyway it was amazing and they had the best scones and honey butter. If you ever happen to be down that way you MUST stop by. I love finding restaurants like this and it is my dream to one day hop on the back of a motorcycle with Brook and eat my way across country! Hopefully someday when the kids are grown we will have the opportunity, but for now finding jems like this are a highlight, especially on my birthday.

After this we needed to go to Walmart since the meat for that night's dinner had mysteriously never made it to the campsite (turns out my parent's dog ate it when my dad was packing up the food). By this point it was raining fairly hard in the valley and we were anxious to get back to camp.

We got back to camp to discover that the canopy had broken and knocked over and broke the lantern and emptied the propane to a seriously low amount. While everyone focused in getting that mess cleaned up I decided to check out our tent. It was wet! Not seriously wet, but a couple of sleeping bags got wet and our air mattress was wet on one side. All of our dirty clothes got wet but that was no big deal. Then we went into my parent's tent and it was flooded. My mom's sleeping bed and sleeping bag were beyond soaked as were all of her clothes. It was at this point we knew we could not stay another night and decided to break down camp. Three hours later we were on our way back to my parent's house.

That night we roasted marshmallows on my parents stove and made s'mores, all took showers(!), and had a good and warm night's sleep. It was such a fun weekend and I have been fielding questions about when we are going camping again since we got back. My kids got dirty and clothes were ruined so I would say all in all it was a success. And instead of putting away all the camping gear I decided to blog about camping instead!