we camp?

April 23rd, 2008 / posted by Jake

Growing up, if anyone were to mention camping to my family we’d laugh and ask, “you’re joking, right?” I mean, as a kid what was there for me to enjoy in camping? I would get filthy in a matter of seconds, freeze at night, eat gross food, and just be miserable the entire time.

So when Jesse invited us camping a few weeks ago, I was quick to recite my line: “you’re joking, right?” But after some convincing, we decided to give it a shot so we went and purchased all the necessary camping equipment and what we didn’t have time to buy we borrowed. We were straight forward in letting Jesse know that “the kids will probably be grumpy and will not sleep well so don’t be disappointed if we leave early or during the night.”

Well rather than going into detail of our camping events, let me just sum it up: Surprisingly, we LOVED it. The kids slept better than ever before and I do not exaggerate. On a typical night, Tyler wakes up anywhere from 2-5 times a night as does Kaitlyn. While they fall back asleep after we comfort them, it’s still draining. But for whatever reason they slept completely through the night which was such a relief. During the day, Tyler ran around making new discoveries every couple minutes or so while Kaitlyn enjoyed watching. After all was said and done, we determined that we would go camping regularly.

So…. what did we do last weekend? We went camping again at the same location. As soon as we pulled up to the campsite Tyler realized where we were and went crazy! He tried to get out of his car seat as quick as he could and started screaming. It was hilarious. Were we pushing our luck hoping that the kids would sleep through the night again? Yes. Did they sleep through the night this time? YUP. Matter of fact, at about 3:00 a.m. the winds picked up to about 25-30 m.p.h. and never let up. The winds were so strong that our tent snapped and partially collapsed on us during the night. It sounded like a hurricane from inside our tent and I couldn’t sleep. Yet somehow the kids never woke up. Amazing! Big thank you to Jesse, Meghan and Dakota Hooper ( hehe ), Andy and Diana Hooper, and Josh, Jenica, Brody, Sadie and Willis Christensen for making our first camping trip enjoyable.

We enjoy camping and I believe I now understand why my family never did growing up. We never had actual camping materials or equipment. We’d borrow someones old nasty tent and therefore never knew how to properly set it up, we most certainly never had foam pads or anything of that comfort, food was scarce and not camp fire friendly, kitchen chairs or yard chairs were used instead of camp fire chairs, flashlights were non-existent so we had to rely on our nocturnal abilities, so on and so forth. Basically needing to buy something specific to an activity is something we didn’t believe in and we therefore had to use regular household items in their place. It did cause us to become very creative.

Which reminds me, rather than purchase the required, and school issued p.e. clothing for Jr.High, I had to borrow someones who was 4-5 years older than me and of course taller. Oh and to top it off, on the front of the jerseys was a white block where you had to write your last name so I had to regularly re-apply white masking tape over it and re-write my name over the previous last name.