National Lampoon's Camping Trip

As the title suggests, we took a 'camping' trip this past weekend. Since Adam has been out of town more than we'd expected with this job, we wanted to just get away for a day and have a little adventure with the girls...and it was definitely that!
We rented a pop-up camper from the nearby Air Force Base, which was very nice. It had 2 queen-sized beds, a gas stove, mini-fridge, and (the kicker) AIR CONDITIONING! Hilarious. Adam is a long way from the 8-day backpacking trips he used to guide in Colorado and Wyoming with Young Life...if it weren't for the kiddos, we'd still be 'roughin it', I promise!
We decided to just do 24 hours out as the first camping attempt and headed over to ShortStay, a Naval Recreation site- just 45 minutes from home. The place was awesome- situated on a huge lake (Lake Moultrie), there was a good-sized beach, tons of kids running around playing, campsites, log cabins, a playground, mini-mart, sailboats to rent, etc...we had a blast during the day! We spent most of the time in the lake- our own private little beach area, too.

Elise got to try her own little kayak out, she LOVED 'swimming' with Adam, and got thrown in the air more times than we could count...(on a side note, as a result of throwing a 36 pound wiggly kid into the air dozens of times, Adam's back hurt so bad he could barely move on Monday!).

Naptime didn't go so well- elise thought it was more fun to peek under the curtain and talk to us over and over again, for about 2 hours until we gave up and went back into the lake...

Ainsley was easy and happy, she became a true "roller" over the weekend, too, flipping over onto her tummy every single time we put her down on her back. She slept great the whole day and went through 5 outfits in under 24 hours, using a variety of bodily fluids.


The only big issue was sleeping overnight for elise! She was so over-tired from not napping and hours in the sun that she just couldn't settle well. Poor thing (and poor us!)- she was awake crying (sometimes in total hysterics) from 8pm until midnight! augh. She's a kid who likes routine and we screwed that up enough for one day that I think she just snapped. Adam ended up sleeping in the bed with her and Ainsley and I bunked in the other one. Since we hadn't planned on that, I didn't bring an extra blanket, so about 1 am I found Adam shivering and curled up under one of Ainsley's extra 'swaddling' blankets! I would've loved a picture of that. We both woke up looking/feeling pretty ragged, but we survived! It was fun, a little chaotic, and another realization that packing up/getting away/cleaning up isn't NEARLY as simple as it used to be. We loved it, overall...it just may be another 6 months until we try it again!