Last Hurrah!

This weekend is our official "last hurrah" before the baby comes. Next weekend Chris will be in Tennessee taking his final board exams and the weekend after that is when Mom comes to town.

So what did we do? We took the kids camping. This was Tristan's first time camping and with his latest sleep issues (waking up at 5:30 AM) I wasn't sure how fun it would be.

We picked up Chris from work early Friday afternoon and headed to Falls Lake where we hoped there would be a camping spot left for us on this holiday weekend. Fortunately, there was. As soon as we opened the van doors the kids were ready to start exploring. Tristan, especially, was excited, jumping up and down and shouting "hurray!" I was glad to hear such shouts of jubilee because all week long I had been trying to prep him for the trip by telling him we were going camping and we were going to sleep in a tent. The reply was always, "NO camp!, NO tent!"

One problem we encountered was buying some wood for our campfire. Our grocery store had bundles all winter long but now, when I needed it most, it was gone. I tried a woodcutting business down the road but they didn't have any split wood and the person who owned the business wasn't there. His mother was nice enough to give me some rotten wood for free but we couldn't get it to burn. When we got to our campsite there was a list of local vendors who sell firewood so I went to the closest one and not only had the name of the company changed but they no longer had firewood either. Bad luck. Chris ended up going to Food Lion for charcoal briquettes. Finally at about 8:30 we were ready to eat. Tinfoil dinners. Yum!

We kept the kids up way to late--until almost 10 p.m. but we all went to bed together and all fell asleep pretty quickly--even Tristan. As campgrounds go, though, I was awakened shortly after midnight by another camp's crying child, talking children, barking dog, you name it. It was a pretty happening place for midnight. I meant to take some earplugs because I knew things like that would keep me awake. Between campground noises, the noises in our tent (Tristan woke up a few times and I had to comfort him), getting up to go to the bathroom and the rain I got a grand total of three hours. Tristan woke up with the birds at 5:30 AGAIN. The rest of my family, however, slept pretty much all night. We were pretty tired today though.

After breakfast we had a little rest in the tent while it sprinkled outside (what's camping without a little rain?). Then we went to the beach and let the kids play on the playground. We decided we had better pack up so we could get home in time for naps. It was a short camping trip and I'm sure I/we put in more hours preparing and cleaning up than we actually camped but it was so much fun and I'm glad we did it.

(This is the position he usually assumes at home while playing with cars. Notice he is using a pinecone, driving it back and forth.)