Camping

Ugh.

I really wanted to like camping.  Cool families camp.  And they like it.  And they have memorable family photos.

Just click over here to see my brother's family enjoy camping.  It even starts out with "We had a super fun weekend camping in San Onofre."  Or over here, to my other brother's family.  They like camping too.  My parents and sister were also on that camping trip.

You'd think, coming from this family of camperness, that I too would enjoy the tenting experience.  Sadly, it has been confirmed this very week that I do not like camping.  Which I was pretty much aware of before this little trip.  But I was just hoping I would.

I'm sure you can imagine all the unpleasantries I endured.  It wasn't fun.  It was work.  And hard.  Not at all like a vacation.

Vacation equals restful, romantic Bed and Breakfast.

I had forgotten.  I have been reminded.

These are the foil dinners I prepared.

The directions I found online said to cook them on the coals.

They burned.

Both nights.

As Paul scraped the burnty parts off his buritto

he lovingly said,

"It's just like scraping burnt toast."

Dessert did not get burned.

Banana with nutella and marshmallows.

Wrap in foil.

Cook on the coals.

Savor with a spoon.

The family tenting next to us left after one night.

We should have taken the hint.

They left us their firewood and...

their ginormous mallows.

Peter trying to eat a supersize s'more.

I looked up one afternoon and found Peter reading on top of the car.

Weird, but okay.

We're camping.

Whatever.

We camped at a state park with sand dunes.

The hiking trails were all sand and some boardwalks.

The boys stopped and played here for a long time.

Paul and I found a bench.

Playing on the shore of Lake Michigan.

The boys are on the right there,

running up and down the dunes.

Now they are sand wrestling.

Making sure sand gets in every crevice.

We woke up on the third day

(I lasted three days, folks)

and it surprisingly started to rain.

So we started packing up a bit,

taking down the tent,

then the tablecloth.

And it kept raining.

So we kept packing.

And everything ended up put away in the car.

So we decided it was time to go.

Thank you, God, for the rain,

I always say.

We were going to stay another night.

Ask the boys and they'll tell you they had a great time camping.  Pretty much everything I didn't like about it, they did.  Sleeping in a tent is crazy fun when you're seven.  Walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night is fantastic because you get to use a flashlight.  Dirt, glorious, dirt.

But we all agree that the jiggitty bug bites were not fun.  We're still scratching.

There you go.  Camping.  Blah.  No thank you.  Day trips, yes.  Boys' camp out, for sure.