Worst Camping Trip Ever

When a couple of my loves were sick Monday, I was looking at the bright side.  To me, if we're gonna get sick, Monday's the day to do it.  It's a weekday, so it results in Jess being home with us when he would normally be at work, and it's as far from the weekend as you can get, so I assumed we'd be healthy and able to enjoy the weekend.  But instead on Friday Neely was stuffed up and coughing, so I had to cancel the barbecue we'd planned with Danny and Jenni and their girls.  :(

The worst part is we all felt okay enough to have enjoyed it, I just figured Neely must be contagious.  :(  Paige seemed okay Saturday, so she still got to play t-ball.  She caught for part of the game.  :)

A coach and one of her teammates helped her get ready.


I love watching her interact with her teammates.  She can be so shy, but once she gets with all the boys on her team I'll see her smiling and laughing and making jokes with them.  All the boys are super nice to her too. 

She wants NO attention from her fans.  We usually get in trouble if we so much as clap for her.  But this time when she staggered out in her catcher's gear, Grampa and I were taking pictures, and she DID shoo us away, saying "NONONONONO!", but we got a smile.

Cason was good to go, so he spent the game with Aunt Mollie again.
 
Poor Neely had to be semiquarantined with her runny nose, so she hung out with Jess and me.
 

At first that was fine, since she was giving Mollie suspicious looks.  But after a bit she was warming up, sneaking little sweet looks at her like this one:

After the game Paige wanted to hurry home to fly her new $1.00 kite from Target.

Of course that was the one day there was no wind in our windy town.

She was disappointed.  Cason wasn't.


We've been telling the kids we'd go camping soon.  We figured this would be a good time, since everyone was feeling fine, despite possibly still being contagious.  We'd still have fun without being in close contact with anybody and getting them sick.

So we(Jess) got us ready to go.  Grampa found them a kids camping set at a yard sale a while back, and they couldn't wait to use it.  They tried putting their tent together themselves, while Neely set up their chair, trying out many different spots.

 I ended up "helping".  :)

As you can see in that last picture, the kids from the next campsite kept coming over.  So much for not being around people while Neely was sick.  The kids were VERY nice.  We liked them.  BUT they really spent a lot of time with us.  Like hours.

They also constantly asked if we had all kinds of things, and if we didn't, they went and asked their parents for it.  Hot chocolate, something to heat water in for the hot chocolate, sticks for toasting marshmallows, dog food and treats for Gia(We had our own dog food and the kid still insisted that we take his huge ziploc bag full of dog food), bandaids, etc.  I'm sure their parents thought we were total camping mooches, even though we had no desire/need for any of it.  Well, we did forget bandaids, and needed that one.

The only time we got a little space was when we went for a hike to find firewood.

I like this guy's pose and smile:

 Then we came back and Jess made us burgers. The kids played in their tent a bit.

But then the kids returned.  It might be cool when our kids are older if they make friends while camping.  But this time it was just stressful.  The oldest boy was constantly talking to us, while Neely was constantly sprinting up and down rocks, or falling out of her camping chair onto her head.

She also tripped 7-10 times in the dirt, scraping her little knees.  Then she went running with her little plastic binoculars, which landed upright in the dirt and she landed on top of them with her forehead, which ended up with dark purple indents from where she landed on the binoculars, HARD.

Meanwhile the kids are still hanging around, chatting and playing while I try to comfort Neely.  Then Paige tells me she's going to get something from the picnic table, starts running FULL speed in that direction BEFORE turning her head to see where she's going, and instantly catches her foot on Gia's leash, trips and FLIES into the picnic table and smashes her knee into the ground.  By this point it was getting to where I had at least as much anger at them as I did sympathy FOR them.  I never used to understand why parents seemed mad at their kids when they were hurt.  I understand now.  It's like how you would be mad at a random kid if they did something ridiculous that resulted in your kid getting hurt.  Well MY kids were doing ridiculous things that resulted in them hurting THEMSELVES, so I was getting mad.  Ha.  That probably sounds quite mean, but seriously.  So while I comforted Paige, I told Jess "Next time someone does something like this we're out of here."  So 30 seconds later, literally, because Paige wasn't even done crying, Cason told me he was going to play, and STARTED RUNNING AS FAST AS HE COULD WHILE LOOKING BACK OVER HIS SHOULDER AT ME.  And weird, he caught HIS foot on Gia's leash, and ate it.  They both of course blamed Gia for their injuries. 

And there we were, 20 minutes later, driving home with 3 sleeping children and 1 sleeping dog.

We had one of those weird conversations on the drive home that had us laughing hysterically even though we were really tired and still feeling that weird combo of worry/sympathy/frustration.

And then we were home, and grateful.

I love camping, but now I remember that it's much harder with children who are between the ages of 6 months and 3 years.

Speaking of children between the ages of 6 months and 3 years, a pic of Neely with her filthy, indented forehead.