First Family Camp Trip!

I started on a Thursday packing for our camping trip.  But before that, Nels was shopping and buying camping supplies...like sleeping bags, air mattresses and cooking stuff/cooler.  Do you know how terrified I was of camping??  I told Nels that I felt like moving across country was easier than camping!!   Haha.  I just have very little experience with it.  I tried researching it and looking for ideas on Pinterest.  What to eat, what to pack, what to buy...lists and lists.  

So here's Thursday...prepping and gathering and making piles and checking my list...

Here's Friday...shopping for food with four kids.  So fun.  😛

And here's Saturday... Day 1 of our planned two day camping trip.  The van was stuffed!

We left around 9 a.m. for Starved Rock an hour and a half west of where we live.  After one potty break, we arrived at 10:45 a.m.  We found our campsite - number 112.  Other people from church were there too.  So it was fun to see and be with them.  

We set up the tent and camp.  The kids played...they liked gathering sticks and rocks.

See Sofie's pile of rocks?

And Noah supervised the building of the tent.  :)

For lunch, I made chicken sandwich meat on rolls with chips and cookies.  Some kids ate theirs with cheese and ketchup.  But everyone liked the rolls and it was easy.  Isak was so hungry.  He ate four sandwiches!  There were hornets bugging us the whole time we ate.  So that was frustrating.  A couple of times kids cried out, screamed and dropped their food on the ground!   Sofie and Noah kept asking to go home.  They did not like the hornets.  

We said hello to our friends and then relaxed for a bit.  Isak brought a book and spent a lot of time reading.  He even stayed up late because he wanted to finish it.  

Here's our tent and crew.

Our friends did a Pringles taste test.  There were at least ten different kinds.  I liked the Dill Pickle, ranch and sour cream and cheese.  The pizza and Memphis BBQ were good too.  

Kids also ate fruit leather by the foot for the first time.  They liked it.  

Sofie, Kira and I had a great time beading.  Sofie made this cute bracelet.  

While we beaded, Nels took Noah and Isak to the playground.  

Then we loaded the van and hiked around Starved Rock.  

We hiked the starved rock loop.

And then the French Canyon...my favorite.  It was so cool looking.  Usually there is a waterfall coming down...but not this time.

Someone was nice and took our family picture.  :)

Then we hiked Lover's Leap and Eagle Cliff.

I love this picture of Nels and Kira.  💜

There were a lot of stairs and boardwalk wood trails.  Sofie and Noah loved counting all the stairs.  Isak also liked to say "hut, 1, 2, 3, 4, hut 1, 2, 3, 4."  Kira was a happy hiker too.  I was proud of all of them  We hiked for almost 2 hours!  

Noah found a perfect walking stick at the end.  He was so happy about it.  

Then we headed back to camp.  It got dark quick!  We ended up cooking and eating in the dark.  We made grilled cheese on our new Coleman gas stove and fry pan.  That was for Noah and Kira to eat.  Isak and Nels roasted hot dogs over the fire for the rest of us.  We heated up some chili on the stove too.  Then we roasted marshmallows.  Noah surprised us.  He loves burning the marshmallows!  He laughed and just thought it was great.  He was so fascinated with fire!  We got cleaned up and settled for bed around 10 pm.  

It was a pretty good day and so far I was ok with the whole camping thing.  Just for future reference... There were two places to use the bathroom.  There were port a potties near our campsite and then a building with showers and bathrooms that was farther away that we could drive to use.  

For some reason, I could not fall asleep.  It might have been because of the loud birds chirping or weird sounding insects.  The woods are loud!  I ended up going potty at 2 a.m.  I still couldn't fall asleep.  Noah and Nels went potty at 3:30 a.m.  Then the rain started and the thunder at 5 a.m.  And as I finally fell asleep, I felt rain drops on my forehead!!  I switched to the other end of my air mattress, it helped for a little while.  By 7 a.m. the kids started waking up.  

Day 2 - Sunday...don't go camping on Sunday...haha.  No really!  It won't work....

Noah was the first to wake up.  He was getting wet on his sleeping bag.  So he came and snuggled in my sleeping bag.  We thankfully had an umbrella to use to keep the rain from our heads as it dripped through the tent ceiling.  Sadly, the floor of the tent was filling up with water too.  At least 2-3 inches in some areas.  All of the kids woke up wet, cold, crying and scared.

We tried to make the most of it.  Well, I didn't do so well and grumbled that I just wanted to go home and how could we make this work??

Nels was super positive and helped Sofie laugh as we put dry pajamas and socks on her.  He helped Isak to not be so frightened and to see the fun in the rain and being wet.  I tried...but it was hard!  We had tried to prepare for the rain by putting a tarp under the tent and putting food and stuff we would need inside the tent.  We didn't anticipate the rain coming down from the ceiling!  And we didn't anticipate heavy downpour for 5+ hours.  

I think we would have been totally fine with the rain if our tent had stayed dry on the inside.

So for breakfast.  Nels stood in the water in the tent and handed everyone a yogurt that they ate on their semi-dry air mattress.  

Then everyone needed to go potty.  So we ran to the van and drove to the nice bathrooms.  

Then the kids stayed inside the car and did Kindles while Nels and I packed up all of our wet stuff.  

It took us about 2 hours.  The rain finally let up just as we were finishing.

This is the rain inside of our tent.  Our bags were wet, sleeping bags...so many wet things.  And muddy too.  

We got everything loaded and turned the car on...it wouldn't start!!  The kids had been using the car battery to charge their Kindles.  So our car battery died.  Thankfully, I had backed into our campsite.  So the pick up across from us was able to easily jump start our van.  Phew!  

Throughout the experience - as terrible as it was - there were things like that - little miracles, tender mercies that made it bearable.  I'm so grateful for Nels's happy attitude that helped all of us to get through our flooded tent camp experience.  

We left about 12 p.m. and got home at 1:45.  We unpacked.  Nels hosed the tent.  I worked on laundry.  It was just so much work!  I cried.  I felt like we wanted to camp so we could BE With our Kids.  But it was so much work to prepare, to pack, to unpack, set up, take down that I didn't get to spend very much time with them.  😞

And that was our first family camping trip!  Highs and lows.  

The new stuff we bought...the sleeping bags, air mattress, cook stove all worked great.  We just need a new tent...if we ever go camping again!  😜