Father’s Day Camping Adventures

Five years ago, we hit a bit of a milestone in that we were able to take our kids camping for two nights without anything going horribly wrong… by “horribly wrong” I mean that no one died. We still had an incident with poison ivy and a bout of the flu. And someone backed into our van. And Scotty drove off with his fishing poles on the roof.

But no one died.

And since that “mostly successful” camping trip, we’ve gone many more times, and I can attest that it gets much easier with each year. 

Thus, we have gone camping over Father’s Day weekend for five years in a row (we also camp at other times, but this particular weekend and location is now a tradition… until we decide it’s not).

These camping trips are starting to become similar from year to year, so I don’t have anything exciting or new to report. The only things that made this trip unique are that Nicky got his braces on the morning we left, so he was pretty uncomfortable. He’s a tough kid, though, so he endured. Also, we took Nicky’s slack line that he got for Christmas, and that made for a fun way to keep the kids busy.

I enjoy seeing my kids out in nature. They alternate between forest exploration and whining about being bored. Oh, how I love to torture them! I alway gauge the success of a camping trip by how dirty they are when we come home, and boy, were they filthy! I still have dirt in my bathtub.

We stayed from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning. Then we drove home in time to head to church for singing time. Our church expectations for the day were, “Whoever’s clean and wants to go to church, get in the car!” Two kids didn’t make the cut.

Between Sunday afternoon and Monday morning, we scrambled to get laundry done and pack our bags again so we could leave on vacation with Scotty’s family. We also had to go buy two new tires because we got a screw in one, and it couldn’t be repaired. 

Luckily, we managed to pull it off!

And now I’ll warn you of the forthcoming vacation posts. If you are my sister-in-law (who shall remain nameless) I know that you are looking forward to these posts. If you are anyone else… please bear with me while I make my life look magnificent on the internet.