Camping, Again :)

Some people would say that we are gluttons for punishment. After a busy week of VBS, we loaded up the car for another weekend of camping! We went with our equally adventerous friends who have 2-year-old triplets (after raising 3 babies at once, I imagine camping doesn't even cause them pause). Despite the fact that the weather channel was predicting a warm, sunny weekend up until a few days before, it was actually raining and even thunderstorming most of Saturday morning. Regardless, we really had a good time, and were even grateful for the coolness that came with the rain, as a hot weekend would have been much more uncomfortable than a drizzly one. At one point, just after a burst of thunder and lightening, we all piled into our friends' minivan for about 30 minutes and let the kids watch a video. Other than that, the adults hung out under a huge canopy and the kids ran in and out of the drizzling rain carrying their little buckets, and loving the mix of dirt, rocks and water. When the rain let up, we went swimming at the little camp beach. My favorite part of the weekend was roasting and eating unlimited numbers of marshmellows/smores and talking until late in the night around the campfire. Sleep was sort of the exception, since we all stayed up to almost 1:00 am Friday night and our kids were up with the sun at 5:15. Saturday we were more tired so we crashed before midnight. (Our whole family took naps together after we got home from church on Sunday afternoon.)

I can't put my finger on exactly what I love so much about camping, but there is something special about being so much a part of the outdoors from the time you wake up in the morning until you go to sleep at night. In a weird way, I also love smelling like campfire smoke, having frizzy hair, not wearing make-up and NOT EVEN CARING how bad I look. It is very freeing to let go of the expected effort to be attractive, even just for a couple of days. Even though it is a lot of work getting there and there are moments why we wonder what we were thinking, I'm still sitting here the next day looking over the calendar for when we can go again!