We Went Camping! Sort of.

I don't think that I've ever mentioned here before that I've never been camping. I went once when I was 14, but I'm not sure if you could technically call it camping as there was electricity everywhere, nice showers, flushing toilets....the term "roughing it" does not come to mind when I think of that particular trip.



This past weekend, however, a group of my peoples loaded up and headed over an hour a way to our friend's property. This was a Friday thru Sunday excursion. Now before y'all think that I am some Survivorman wannabe, let me clarify something.



We went on Saturday from about 1 pm until 6 pm.



Yes siree, we camped for 5 solid hours! I KNOW! Y'all are impressed, aren't you! I was too!

Actually, while I..uh.. Monk..uh..the girls would have looooved to have stayed the night, Monk and I decided to take it for a test run before making any commitments, you know? I mean it's one thing to nurse a baby in the comfort of your own bed when the temperature is a comfortable 68 degrees in the house. It's a whole 'nother thing to nurse a baby in the middle of 400 acres, in a tent, on an air mattress with the temperature in the low 40's. Her milk is still the same temperature regardless. Unfortunately for me, there is a certain amount of, um, exposure I will not endure no matter how much I love that girl. 'Nuf said
already.

I'm also relatively sure that the other folks in our group didn't want to be awakened at 3 o'clock in the morning with the sounds of Hope screaming things like "PACI!" or "CUH!" (cup). And I'm fairly certain that Grace and Liv, otherwise known as the "Tinkle Twins", would not have appreciated midnight excursions to the outhouse in 40 degree weather.

So to prove that we roughed it in the Great Outdoors for all of 300 minutes I took pictures. Lots of them. But for y'all, just a little smattering of what we did for 18,000 seconds.

(By the way, if the math is wrong on that just keep it to yourselves, okay? I never professed to do math. It sounded right so I put it down. Leave it alone.)

A bonafide campfire. It cooked food, kept us warm and nearly choked us because of the wind. I even put wood on it!

And official tire swing, or "whang", if you are our dear, sweet, little Hope. She love this thang!

Liv was pretty fond of the thing, too. I was hoping that somehow it could've knocked out her dangling front tooth. No such luck and Snaggletooth is still roaming around the house with that thing in!

Daddy lovin' on that baby girl. That baby girl did NOT like her first camping trip. The wind was very windy (I am profound, am I not?) that day and it made for one very unhappy baby. Later that night I found soot in her ear. Look, tents!

Sis loved hanging from this thing. That is until she found out it was for hanging dead animals on to weigh and gut them. It lost its appeal after that little tidbit of information. Ah, those city girls.

This is only a small, very small example of the dirt that was on this child that day. We were there for 5 hours! I could not even imagine what these children would have looked like after 48 hours.

And my favoritest picture of all...Monk coming out of the outhouse. See, we really did rough it!

Okay, so maybe it wasn't real camping since we didn't stay all night, but it was training for when we do go for real, right?

And honestly, I don't mind nature near as much as I thought I would.

Well, except for the dirt. The dirt was just....dirty.