Jeremy's First Camping Experience

We are gone for so much of the summer every year that when we're actually in town, we don't feel like going anywhere.  Every year, our friends head to the mountains to camp, and we've declined their invitations, wanting to stick closer to home.  Well, it dawned on us this year that our almost 5-year-old son has never been camping!  The last time we went was when I was 8 months pregnant with him.  I can't hardly believe it has been that long, and I definitely can't believe that he doesn't have any camping memories!  Well to remedy this, our friends, the Macks, invited us to join them and some other friends over Labor Day weekend.  We said yes this time, mostly because school has started and summer has been over for us for several weeks.  Unfortunately, things didn't pan out and so we had to figure out a Plan B.  We had made the mistake of telling our kids weeks ago that we would be going camping.  In fact, we even set up a play tent in Grace's room several weekends ago to let the kids "practice" sleeping in a tent. 

 So, what was Plan B?  We had a "Backyard Camp Out" and invited the Macks to join us.  They even drove their RV over to our house to pretend that they were really going camping.  Here are some pictures of our time together!

We had a wonderful dinner (the Wiens family joined us for that).  That's Jason's arm- I know, silly, but it was the only one I managed to remember to take of our meal.

 

The kids swam and played in the water (we said it was like playing in a lake or river).

 

 

 

We roasted marshmallows and had s'mores!

 

Randy and Jason set up two tents- one for the boys, one for the girls.  They brought tons of stuff into their tents- board games, Star War figures, cards, coloring stuff... They were still awake at 10:30pm.  The adults stayed up talking but when it was time for bed, Randy and Jamie ended up sleeping in our family room (on our floor!) with their little one, and Jason and I slept in our own bed.   I still can't believe they slept on our floor- we really need to invest in at least a blow up mattress!!! (Again, so sorry, Macks!)  The girls woke up at 4:45am, and the boys were up before 6am.  We had our windows open and they were so loud- wide awake, laughing and talking.  Later, we found out they were passing notes back and forth between the tents.

After we got up, our families were able to have a nice breakfast together before the Macks packed up and headed home.

It wasn't exactly what we pictured for camping this weekend, but we had so much fun!  We are so thankful to the Macks for going through all the work of getting everything ready just to stay in our backyard- they helped to create a wonderful memory for our family- what a great first camping memory for Jeremy!