Our Camping Misadventures

We decided to go camping. I'm not quite sure what we were thinking. We went to Tony Grove in Logan Canyon. On the way, we stopped in Logan to eat at the Bluebird, a restaurant that Aaron and I love but hadn't taken the kids to before. We also went to the Willow Park Zoo, which is teeny-tiny, but lots of fun. To emphasize how small this zoo is, there was a display of pet rocks.

But we got to see lots of birds and turtles, and even a wallaby and an elk. The pelicans were really cool - they look like living cartoon characters.

Anyway, all of that went well. We even did okay once we got to the campsite, other than the fact that this was Meghan literally 5 minutes into camping:

And this was Gracie:

We had been there 5 minutes, people. 5 minutes. Impressive, no?

So, we set up our tent, and did the traditional roasting hot dogs for dinner and marshmallows for smores, which was all pretty fun.

So far, so good, right? Patience, my friends. It was already getting pretty late, and we wanted to spend the day at the lake the next day, maybe do some geocaching, some fishing, all kinds of fun camping sort of stuff. Arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday morning, so we had to jam-pack our limited time with fun. Can't you just hear me yelling at the kids, "This is fun, dang it. Hurry up and have fun!!!" So let's get to bed nice and early, s0 we can be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning.

And that's where the real fun begins. Now, my children are not fabulous sleepers to begin with. We usually end up with at least 2 of them in our bed by morning. This morning, I woke up with all 4 of my kids in the bed with me, and Aaron somehow ended up by himself in the lower bunk in the big kids' room. But I digress.

Thus began the longest night of my life. Ethan and Annie had a hard time falling asleep, but once they were out, they were all right. Gracie and Meghan became possessed by some sort of screaming, wailing, no-sleep needing demons. Gracie woke up every 20 minutes, even when Aaron I were holding her. I had to nurse her all night long to keep her relatively quiet because we were close to other campsites. Meghan woke up randomly at least 20 times during the night to yell at the top of her lungs. She was so tired and out of it, she was beyond all reasoning. By 3 in the morning, Aaron and I were snapping at each other and ready to cry ourselves. We got no sleep at all. By 4 in the morning, we knew this was the end of our camping experience for this year.

When the older kids woke up (at the crack of dawn, of course), we told them that we were leaving that afternoon. Ethan was disappointed. I think Annie was relieved. We did get to the lake, and tried a bit of fishing (no luck). We hiked around the whole lake. Meghan managed to turn into a mud-monster again. On our hike, 3, count them 3, separate people - complete strangers- asked if they could take her picture she looked so funny.

The lake really was pretty, and the hike was fun, but I think it will be a while before we attempt it again. We packed up, and got home early Saturday evening. To make up for leaving early, we let the kids stay up and watch the Roy Days fireworks. We already had a sub in Primary, so we stayed home and took it easy on Sunday. Aaron took a 4 hour nap. I figured since he did all the driving, and I got to sleep in the car, he deserved it.

And if you have made it this far in reading what is officially my longest blog post ever, I will reward you with some pictures of the nicer parts of our camping trip.

The moral of the story - next time I say we're going camping, shake some sense into me. Shake really, really hard.