Camping Adventure #1

Two weeks ago we took the kiddos on our long awaited first camping trip of the summer. The plan was to meet up with some friends of Iain's (hubby) from his work and hang out for 3 days of fresh air and life in the outdoors. I will start by saying nothing went as planned! The weekend was very fun, but like I said, nothing that we thought it would be!

The night before we're suppose to leave, we get a call from our friends. They are already there, but leaving because 2 of their 3 kids are sick. The were driving home that night but the dad and oldest daughter would be back Saturday morning to finish out the weekend with us. A disappointment since we were looking forward to seeing all of them, but things happen!

We drive down Friday morning, get all set up, all ready for the fun! We head down to the beach for the afternoon. Iain and I were actually excited at that point that it was just us. We've never been camping with just the 5 of us. Many of our friends camp, so there are always several of us. This was kind of quaint!

We had a great tent helper

Setting up camp Calling out "wait for me boys" over and over and over and... Now I will go into "how not to spend the first night of a camping trip". We've done this before. We do know what we're doing but for some reason it all went array! The kids were all getting tired so we thought an early bedtime would be the best choice. Wrong move #1. We make dinner, clean up and all is going well. We decide to get the fire going for s'mores. The kids eat one, then two. Wrong move #2. Who in their right mind thinks kids are going to go to bed after 2 s'mores? We obviously weren't thinking! Long story semi shortened here...at 9:30pm our 'neighbors' pull up and start to set up their tent, RIGHT next to ours. Since they can't see, they shine the car lights in that direction. Which is now basically shining on the kids, who are WIDE awake. At this point Sara declares herself a "dinosaur/lion" and runs around the tent growling at everyone. She's cracking up,the boys are in hysterics and we're feeling quite helpless. Sleep is not happening. We make the decision to put the kids in the car and see is they'll fall asleep. Within' 5 miles all three kids are sound asleep. Silence at long last! (Side note: at a little after 10:00pm our neighbors finally figured out their tent! Thank goodness!)

The boys love climbing rocks

Sara was so excited to find this "S". She thought the whole place was for her!!

Iain torture!

The kids loved watching the trains at the beach. You can see the water just past it on the right.

This picture cracks me up. Click on it to see Iain. I was trying to get a picture of Sean with his gooey s'more but I think Iain makes the better point!

Roasting marshmallows on Friday. Notice it's still light out?

Saturday nights roasting was a bit later......for both of them!
But in classic Collins' style, they were up early and ready to go!