Camping

Joe called me on his way home Friday evening to suggest we go camping the next day. With summer growing more ripe by the moment, soon to be over-ripe, I kinda felt like "now or never!" so I happily packed us all up. We left Saturday afternoon after I worked 10-3, and we headed to Kelly-Dahl campground just west of Boulder. We'd checked out a few other National Forest campground, which were ALL BOOKED for weeks to come. First, who books a campsite? Then, who books weeks in advance? NOT the kind of camping we're used to. Kelly-Dahl looked promising, though, and sure enough, we got one of only TWO remaining campsites at the whole campground, and it was pretty nice. Patrick fell asleep on the drive up, he was so tuckered out from staying up late the night before insisting he was "done sweeping," and we go camping THAT NIGHT. Of course, even though we WERE camping when we woke up, he was in a typical post-nap grumpy funk and refused a nice picture with dad. Eli was trouble and would NOT stop sticking rocks/sticks/pinecones/dirt in his mouth, so we often had to confine him to the pack-n-play. Patrick had a great time, enjoyed his hot dog dinner, threw lots of sticks on the fire, and made sure to help us out by going potty with either of us every time we went. Fortunately, the latrine was very close to us. We didn't mind so long as it meant he would NOT have an accident in the sleeping bag (which he didn't). In spite of no accidents, the night was tough... Eli went to sleep great, but Patrick then insisted we were done camping and he wanted to sleep at home, so he didn't get to bed until about 11:00, when we went to bed ourselves. About 11:10 Eli woke up and I was on duty, trying to rock him back down and give him a bottle and whatnot, and he didn't truly fall asleep until 1:30 a.m. From 1:30 to 5:30 I FROZE (I'm a cold sleeper when I camp, no matter what I do), and then at 5:30 Eli woke up for the day. BLAHHHHH. It was a rough night for all of us, so we all took naps when we got home. As soon as we were up, in spite of his overwhelming excitement to be going camping, Patrick was excited to go back home. So excited he climbed in the car and yelled at us while we packed everything up. He would have been much happier if we had just left the tent up and the supplies lying around so we could have gotten out of there 30 minutes sooner. Of course, as soon as we got home, guess where he wanted to go? CAMPING. Well, in that nobody got hurt or killed, the camping expedition was a success, but Joe and I agreed that next time we are leaving the kids at home and WE are going camping by ourselves. We'll leave these cuties with a babysitter.