Adventures in camping!

After slaving away, and preparing list after list, and packing for seven people to go play in the dirt for two days, I forgot the tent poles. I think it's the most important thing to bring, aside from a tent. So my sweet husband had to go on a major drive after work so that we didn't have to sleep under the stars, exposed for all the woodland animals to come eat. I'm sure tent poles will be first on all of my lists from now on.

The children were filthy within minutes, but had a fabulous time. Lillie's tushie was black about ten minutes after finding that the little stream close to our campground had water in it. She spent the rest of the camping trip in various phases of wet. Odessa wouldn't keep her shoes on, so walked around barefoot the majority of the time. (Just picture how very black her feet were.) Michael was in heaven. Dirt heaven. I think he was the dirtiest of them all. We went on a major hike with 12 kids and 8 adults (lots of cousins!). Katherine was my poky little puppy and we were last the whole way. I discovered how to make her move, however. On the way back we walked in front of her cousin's dog, and boy can that girl move! We did lots of crafts, played lots of games and had lots of fun.

Saturday morning, we did things in the fashion of my husband's family, and our little city had vacated by 9:10 a.m. These people don't mess around. When it's time to go, they are outta there!! And I have conformed. Dave found me in the tent hurriedly rolling up sleeping bags and asked what the rush was. When I told him that everyone would be gone if we didn't get started, I don't know that he believed me! And we were still the last ones gone, at 9:10 a.m.! The fun of it was that we got to stop by Grandma's house on the way home and dirty up her pool. I'm sure their filter will have to work overtime for weeks to get all the dirt out of it!

And now that we are back, I have never needed a laundry maid more than I will this week. Oh the laundry. And thus concludes our annual family camping experience.