Camping Weekend

Wow- an almost 2 week absence from blogging.  I don't know if I've ever gone that long without posting.  The day after my last post was my 33rd birthday.  Then we all got nasty colds.  It was a gorgeous weekend and any spare time we had was spent outside enjoying it.  Then, I worked very hard to finish Sam's 2 year old photo book (yeah, my duo is closer to 3 years old than 2, but better later than never!) because my code for a free 12 by 12 photo book was expiring.  The first year books were about 45 pages long, and the second year book ended up being 93 pages, so it took me a monumental effort to get it done! 

Plus, we tried to fit in one last camping trip before handing back my parent's camper.  It was a lot colder last weekend (like 40's in the daytime and a low of 25 degrees F at night), but the heater in the camper made it just fine.  The cold weather gave us the opportunity to to try out Sam and Anna's new winter coats!  This was their 3rd camping trip.

Photos from our camping adventure:

(because it was so overcast, the photo just doesn't do the fall colors justice.  The leaves were more vibrant than it looks)

 It was quite a hike climbing the "mountain" wearing a 30 lb toddler stapped to our backs!  Boy, am I sure glad we have an Ergo and Mei Tai to be able to do something like this though.  I couldn't imagine trying to get them to climb up by themselves, and carrying them the whole way just wouldn't have worked.

Sitting by the campfire.

Eating smores- a camping must!  (Sam and Anna's second smores)

It was a wee bit chilly.

Peek!

And peek again!

Sam and Anna really liked using Grandma and Grandpa's camper this summer and fall!

Camping Take 2

Against what I thought would be my better judgement, we took Sam and Anna camping for the second time this summer last weekend.  I thought for sure after last summer's debacle,  it would be a long, long time before attempting it again.  However, I grew up camping with my family and spent 4 summers as a camp counselor in college, so camping is in my bones and I really want us to camp as a family often as Sam and Anna grow up.  So we went, and I braced myself for more of the same as last year:  horrible sleep by all,  sickness, bugs, crabby people, and probably whatever could go wrong, would.

It wasn't all sunshine and roses... but it was a definite improvement, and not horrible.  I only cried once. :)  (Mostly because of lack of sleep and rain holding us back from the fun we had planned.) Sam slept awfully the first night and was awake most of the time between 11:30 and 4 am. It rained Saturday morning and only cleared up when it was about naptime (figures) which shot our fun plans a little, and then rained again Sunday morning.  It would figure that the only rainy weekend so far this summer would be the one that we chose to go camping.  But besides that, no other huge negatives!

Anna slept great both nights.  Even though they went to bed late and didn't sleep late in the morning, neither child was overly cranky and we didn't have to do any time outs or endure any tantrums.  Naps were pretty good.  The camper was a savior with the rain, even if the close quarters made it challenging to entertain two 2 year olds for hours. 

Sam and Anna adored playing with their cousins and loved camping with their grandparents.

Rain wasn't going to stop us!

Going on a walk in the rain.

Going swimming when the weather cleared up after nap.

Eating first s'mores by the fire.

Sam and Anna's first bike ride.

(My disclaimer:  We do not own our own bike and trailer and therefore Sam and Anna do not have helmets yet.  It was a super short bike ride before bedtime, and that was it.  If we went one more than just this quick one, I would have certainly make sure all of us had helmets on.)

Where we were camping there was a bike trail on an old railroad bed that pass through rock tunnels.  We took Sam and Anna to the nearest tunnel by bike, the shortest tunnel at 1/4 mile long. 



Tunnel #1

When we left on Sunday, we drove to the trail by the farthest away tunnel (the longest at 3/4 mile long), walking to get down the trail this time.  Sam and Anna had so much fun walking through the dark with their flashlights, hearing their voices echo, and pretending to be trains chugging through the tunnel. Sam and Anna are in a huge train phase right now, so this was a perfect adventure to take them on.

Added bonus of a camping weekend:  Sam slept for 13 hours straight the night we got home, and still took a 3 hour nap on time the next day.  Anna slept almost as long.  Now we're pondering a trip in the camper to visit the farthest away grandparents in two weeks...  a 8 hour drive, just a two hour drive south of the Canadian Border and the farthest north Sam and Anna have ever been.

The Definition of Insanity

I read a quote from Albert Einstein (probably on pinterest, ha!) that states: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

I must be a little insane then, because I agreed to take Sam and Anna camping again this summer, even after our epic first camping trip last year (you have to reread it to truly see how incredibly awful it was.  I did, and I had forgotten some of the events we endured!)  It can't possibly be as bad this summer, right?  I mean, I won't get the flu again in the summer, my dog won't roll in rotten eggs, and Sam and Anna won't both be bitten by deer ticks, right?

However, this summer, we have a special weapon that I'm sure will at least help in the sleep department.  As Sam likes to say: Ta-da!

This is our newly acquired camper.  My parents bought a new one and are letting us use their old one for a while before either we decide to buy it from them or decide not to, and they sell it.  I don't care about what any camping purists say- you can still be "camping" in a rv.  Anyone who thinks a differently needs to borrow a couple of twin toddlers for a spin and then see if tent camping only truly counts as roughing it.

We are leaving today after nap and returning Sunday. *Gulp.*  Wish us luck.

So because we have a rv camper and not just a pop-up camper this time, I'm not entirely insane, right?  ...right?

Yup, We Were Crazy

The fact that I'm sitting typing this post will show you that I did survive our first camping experience with Sam and Anna.  In fact, all of us did survive.  But, because of the extraordinary events that happened this past weekend, there were times that it truly felt like survival wasn't necessarily a guarantee!

We arrived Friday evening and things were okay at first.  Sam and Anna took 1 hour 20 minutes to fall asleep at bedtime in our pop up camper, but I expected that.  That's why we put them to bed at 8 pm more like usual without letting them stay up later.  While they were asleep we sat around the fire with my parents, brother, and sister-in-law.  At that point, our dog Bella found some rotten eggs off in the brush and had a heyday rolling around in it.  Things went downhill from there pretty fast.

The adults went to bed at 11 pm and just as I was falling asleep around midnight, Sam woke up crying.  I could tell pretty quickly that he had a dirty diaper (which has not happened during his night sleep for him since he was a little baby!) so we took him out to our car to change him to avoid waking up Anna.  He really would not go to sleep after we were done.  We spent 3 hours trying.  Thankfully Anna did not wake up- a small bone God threw us since the challenges we were going to face on our camping trip were just beginning. 

At about 2 am ( I had not slept at all yet) I started to feel ill.  I should probably mention that Anna had thrown up Wednesday night and there was a bug going around daycare.  I handed Sam off to my husband and booked it to the bathroom... a 5 minute walk away.  While I was headed there, it started to rain so I was soaked by the time I got back to our camper.  Let's just say that bathroom and I spent a lot of time together in the next 24 hours.  I should also add here that there were car alarms going off multiple times at around 3 am.  Anna again did not wake up (Sam was already awake).  If Anna had woken up, I probably would have marched over there and given that campsite a piece of my mind!

Sam finally fell asleep at around 4 am.  Anna woke up at 6:30 am.  I got 2 1/2 hours of restless sleep.  Sam got less than half of his usual night sleep.  Smarter people would have probably packed up and headed home at that point.  We did not.  Besides, I wasn't sure I could handle the 2 hour drive anyway.

Saturday, both  Sam and Anna were super cranky and fussy because they were so overtired.  They had fun, but any little thing would set them off.  I felt horrible.   We couldn't go for any long hikes in the woods or anywhere because I needed to be close to the bathroom.  My husband gave our dog a bath so she didn't stink.  I should also probably add in here that we spent over an hour trying to put up a screened shelter borrowed from friends without directions and eventually gave up.

Saturday afternoon Sam took a 1 1/2 hour nap ( I did too), which wasn't stellar, but at least it was something.  Anna slept for 3 hours.  While Anna was still sleeping, we discovered that Sam and gotten bit by a deer tick on his arm.  Since it had to be in for less than 24 hours, we shouldn't have to worry about Lyme's Disease.  We had a super time trying to hold him down and get that thing out though.

I started to feel a little better around dinner time and ate something for the first time that day and was able to keep it down.  Sam and Anna took 20 minutes to fall asleep at bedtime, so that was an improvement.  We headed to bed at 11 pm again after sitting around the fire and our night # 2 began.

This time Anna woke up when we tried to get in the camper, with her usual bloodcurdling scream-cries.  She had a dirty diaper this time, so like the night before with Sam, we took her out to the car to try to avoid waking up Sam.  And just like with Sam the night before, she would not go back to sleep for hours.  Around 2 am we finally succeeded, but I couldn't fall asleep because of the mosquitoes that had apparently gotten into out camper.  Then from there on out, Sam and Anna took turns waking up off and on for the rest of the night.  The mosquitoes were probably bothering them too- because the night before they had gotten quite a few bites on their faces while the slept.  This time, when they woke Sunday morning, they looked like they had chicken pox from all the mosquito bites. (I called them my polka dotted kids.)  It is also possible that they had trouble sleeping because they were cold. 

We ended up putting them in bed with us as a last ditch effort.  I was amazed that Sam co+slept pretty soundly but he was ridiculously overtired and that's certainly why.  Anna kept waking up off and on between us while I slept on about an inch of bed space.  They woke for the day at about 7:30 am.  I may have gotten more sleep the second night, but not by much.  What I did get was in short bits mostly less than 45 minutes each time.  I lost track of how often they were waking around 2:30 am.

You can imagine we were quick to pack up Sunday morning and head home but before we left with our overtired, cranky polka dotted toddlers, we noticed that this time Anna had gotten bit by a deer tick on her arm.  Of course.

So I'm not sure what the icing on the cake was of Sam and Anna's first camping trip- our dog rolling in something rotten?  The double toddler tick whammy?  Having the flu and the bathroom being impossibly far away?  We figured they wouldn't sleep spectacularly, but gosh, it would have been nice if they would have at least slept the worst on the same night so we could have had one decent night.  Who would have imagined all those other things happening too???  And this is minor, but I forgot to add that somewhere in the woods we lost Sam's amber teething necklace.  We are now discovering just how helpful that little necklace was to ease his teething discomfort.  I will be ordering a new one, stat!

We packed our camper and have no plans on using it again for a long time.  Maybe by next summer, the memories will have faded and we might be crazy enough to attempt camping trip #2 with two  2 1/2 year old toddlers.  But if I read this post again next summer, I really doubt it!!!

My polka dotted kids