The Wild Outdoors

Well, we survived our first camping trip with Grayson. I wish I was joking by saying "survived" but it really is appropriate.

The day started out great! We got our tent and everything set up before kicking off Holten's birthday party. The kids had a blast eating suckers, playing tag and soccer, burning through the juice boxes and, of course, devouring the cookie cake.

I'd say somebody liked his blue ring pop. 

Gray, Holt and Luke playing "Go Diego Go!" 

Gray insisted on putting on his party hat himself. 

A few of the kids getting a sugar fix. 

Luke and Gray getting down to business. 

After the party, we fired up the campfire and grilled hamburgers and hot dogs. Then, we made s'mores

This is Addison. Isn't she the cutest? She was a girl after my own heart. She couldn't get enough BBQ chips or s'mores.

Once it was dark, we tucked Gray and Holt into their sleeping bags and hung out around the campfire with my sisters and brother-in-law Ben. We knew there was a chance of rain sometime in the night, but we had our tents staked down and rain guards on just in case the 35 percent chance of storms came our way. We also packed up a lot of our stuff into our cars thinking we were being overly cautious. 

About 1:30 a.m. the fun ended. All of a sudden we woke up to 60 mph winds and crazy thunder and lightening. It wasn't even raining very badly, but the wind was incredible. Gray is already freaked out by thunder after the recent tornado grazed his school, and he woke up hysterical. I grabbed him and anything else I could carry and ran to the car. 

We all scrambled to load our gear and get to safety. Our tent ended up rolling about 100 feet away as we drove off to take shelter at Michael's parent's lake house which is luckily located very close to where we were camping. 

We settled in at the house only to realize there was an infestation of spiders to contend with...and not just any spiders, brown recluses. We hadn't been out to the lake house in several months so the spiders have been enjoying some uninterrupted nesting. 

We killed all that we could see and then finally got back to sleep, only to be woken back up around 3:30 a.m. when Holten started puking. After getting him cleaned up and situated, we tried once again to sleep even though the sun was about to start rising. 

A bit later, Gray woke up to go potty and also ended up puking. We think it was because they had so much sugar and food they don't normally have throughout the day. Either way, we were all ready for the trip to be over. 

Around 8 a.m., my sisters and I went back over to the state park and salvaged what was left of our campsite and gear. Everything was a wet, muddy mess, but we managed to find everything that had gotten scattered in the night. 

On the drive back home, I asked Gray if he liked camping and he said yes, his favorite part was (ironically enough) sleeping in the tent.