I have been wanting to go camping for months. Do you ever have a place or situation you imagine as your "ideal"? Mine is being with my family out in the woods hiking and camping. Having my ideal sit in my head for months could have made reality fall short. This camping trip did have its ups and downs, but over all I am so grateful for this past weekend and look forward to camping again soon.
The biggest "down"? I get frazzled and stressed out preparing for travel, and often on the 2nd day of a trip I have a disabilitating headache. Thanks to my husband for making the drive to buy me some Tylenol, I made it through. I should probably apply my childbirth relaxation techniques to trip-taking!
Justin and I were hard-core-type campers before having kids. We would backpack in to remote places and camp... No stoves, no gallons of water (just a water filter and a stream), no pillows, etc. and it has taken Justin a long time to accept "drive up and camp" as a necessity for our family of 4 young children right now. We still leave the air mattresses and electronics at home, but we did bring almost enough pillows for all of us. We almost had enough tent space for all of us too. And nearly enough sleeping pads. In other words, while we do like roughing it, we need a bigger tent and some more supplies!
How do we spend our time camping? Well, Justin and the older kids made nature crafts stitching leaves together with thorns and vines.
Here is a pouch with a "treasure" inside (every metal object my children find on the ground is a treasure, along with most trash or natural objects... So treasure is nearly everything).
William wanted a pouch to hold things, so Justin whipped one up. He is crazy good at making things for the kids to play with out of whatever is at hand (like a car with spinning wheels he once made on a different camping trip).
The pebbles at our campsite were great for burying children and filling up shoes. And the picnic bench was just the right size for Patrick to climb and then fall down, yikes (he sure is a climber!).
Our family enjoyed geocaching (using an app on our phone) which is great fun for children because it is a real life treasure hunt (geocaching is ALL over the place... I suggest you check it out). Want to know what to do with all the nick knacks you want to get rid of? I keep ours in a shoebox for geocaching. When the kids find a cache, they choose something they want to keep and then we leave something from our shoebox for the next person to find. So, we still end up with a new set of odds and ends, but trading them in this manner is fun.
It was a wonderful Mother's Day weekend, and we still made it home in time to wish our moms a Happy Mother's Day.
I'll leave you with this; it is a basket Justin made for me out of honeysuckle vines. Seriously. He is something else.
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