For Labor Day, we decided to take the kids camping. It's honestly been around 2 years since we've all gone together -- Nora has never even been before. That is probably the only reason why we attempted it this time: we had forgotten how hard it is to camp with little 'uns.
Big Bear is about 2 hrs away from us, so we decided to leave as soon as Peter got home from school on Friday -- problem was, it was Labor Day and there was a detour to a two-lane road that we had to take to get up there. So it actually took us about 4 hours. Which was okay, we had a good audiobook.
The main problem was finding a camping spot once we got there. Since it was a pretty spur of the moment trip, we didn't have a campsite reserved and by the time we arrived all the first-come-first-served spots were already filled up. It was getting close to dark by this point and since we knew we had to find a place pronto, we decided to pull off the road and make camp in a little clearing we found. Turns out this was the absolute best spot for us. Plenty of room to roam around and no one super close by that heard Nora crying all night.
Because she did. CRY all night. Blerg.
Excuse the grainy-twilight picture -- but here we are trying to get the tent set up as quickly as possible.
We got pretty lucky actually, because the next morning we woke up to this beautiful sight.
The kids were in heaven. One of the main reasons we actually went camping was so the boys could use their Swiss Army Knives (don't even try calling them 'pocket knives,' Benji will immediately correct you) we brought them back from Switzerland. Due to several injuries already, they currently reside in the safe but they probably ask us if they can get them out to 'whittle' just about every single day. I'm not even kidding. So the fact that they got to keep in their own knives, in their own pockets, the entire weekend, was a pretty big deal. I was sure we'd end up losing one, but the kids actually took really good care of them. Probably because they were taking them out of their pockets like every half hour all weekend for some vitally important task. So not kidding here.
Despite not doing the best at sleeping in a tent (the boys did great btw!), Nora was all about camping. She was over the moon for exploring and picking up random sticks and pinecones to show us. She constantly cracks us up.
Peter looking all official.
I was freezing pretty much the entire weekend, but the boys tell me it was actually pretty good weather - despite us not being able to have a fire due to the drought and all the forest fires. Sigh. Marshmallows around a camp stove just aren't quite the same.
On Saturday, we went down to the lake and rented a kayak and got to see all kinds of fish while battling the choppy water.
After doing some hiking and exploring around the lake, we were all pretty exhausted that night and everyone slept much better. Nora only woke a few times, which was grand, comparatively. The next morning, we simply got up, broke camp and went to church (all smelly and dirty) and then headed back home. It was quite a fun trip and I think the kids all really enjoyed it, even if we were exhausted afterwards!
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