Saints Servants & Scholars: The Great Outdoors

I'd like to say that we are a camping family. I've always wanted to be an "outdoorsy" type family that fishes and camps and hikes and does all that rustic survival stuff, but reality is we are lucky to camp once a year. Camping is a big project. It requires a lot of planning, packing, setting up, taking down, loading up, unpacking, and cleaning up. It is not all that relaxing. I know people with trailers that are all loaded with their stuff and they just jump in and go. They have beds and stoves and shower and toilets and electricity and even airconditioning. If we were those people I might become more of a camper. But we aren't so I'm at least trying to maintain my once a year quota.

This year we figured if we were going to all the work we better camp for two nights. I stopped in at the campground on our way home from co-op with the tent. Our plan was to get the tent all set up and head home and get the car all packed and be ready to go so when Rusty got home from work we could just zip out and have a fun filled evening around the campfire.

When we made our reservation we were told that we couldn't reserve a specific site it was just first come first served so I got there as soon as we could, 2pm. As I checked in I asked if we could just choose a site and let them know where we were on our way out. She said sure so we were off and running. We went to the perfect sites we had picked on our screening trip the week before and it was available so the kids and I unloaded the van set up the tent and were heading home to finish packing by 3:30. Not bad :)

Unfortunately on the way out when I informed her of our site I was told that site was reserved- What?? Well evidently you CAN reserve sites if you have a group- so we had to take down our tent move to an entirely different section of the campground and re-set everything up. After several back and forths to confirm we had a spot that would work we got it all un-packed and headed home. We got home around 5:30. Not so good. By the time we packed, loaded the car, bought a few last minute items, etc it was very late and dark so we stopped at Arbys for dinner. We realized at the campground that our air mattress pump was broken and so was our latern so we quickly laid out sleeping bags and just settled down for a night in the woods with a plan to run to Wal-Mart tomorrow to remedy the situation. I was exhausted. Luckily Rusty is a good sport and sang us all to sleep, until Kate requested he let his ipod sing us to sleep instead.

We got up early the next morning and the weather was perfect. We decided to go on an early morning hike to the duck pond.

It was just the right type of hike for us. Short, sweet and interesting. Ben examined all of the bugs, guppies, tadpoles and ant hills along the way. Lauren kept us moving at a brisk pace (anxious to be done). Kate and Dallin were busy using the binoculars.

On the way back to our campsite we decided to scope out an area that was appropriate for Rusty to try out his new, homemade, water bottle rocket. We were all very anxious to test it out so we decided to go ahead and give it a trial run, or two, or three. It was awesome! The kids loved shooting it off and we took some fun videos of the momentous occassion. Unfortunately after about three launches the wind carried the bottle out to sea... so we added that to our list of things to pick up at Wal-Mart.

The kids couldn't wait to get in the water so we let the brave ones get in and swim for a bit before heading back to camp for lunch. It was still a little too early and overcast for me to get in, (and thus we see WHY my family is not the outdoorsy/adventurous sort).

We were very lucky to have friends join us on this camping adventure, so by the afternoon we had a few buddies and some sunshine and everyone hit the lake.

I borrowed some pictures from our friends blog - thanks Cassandra :)

That night we all ate dinner together, roasted marshmallows and played games-- I still can't believe with around 20 kids running around no one was injured or fighting.