Camping

I've had a goal to go camping for a while. Tommy got a big new tent with all his scout camping, and we got some awesome marshmallow roasting sticks, so now we have all the stuff we might need to go as a family, but it hadn't happened yet. We have been planning to but have had so many bad weekends with weather issues that I thought it might not happen before it gets too hot here. Once it's summer, it doesn't get below 85 or 90 even at night, so there is no way I'm going camping then. (We made the mistake of going camping with Tommy's cousins the first summer we moved here and had one of the worst nights of sleep ever. Definitely learned that lesson.)

But we managed to go last weekend and had literally the BEST time. It could not have been more perfect. Some of our good friends here, the Carters, came with us--we invited them because we know they are big campers, and they were perfect camping buddies. Ben is Dane's best friend, and Emmi is Graham's little friend and Eli is Lucy's age. We went to a campsite in McKinney, only about half an hour away, where they usually have the Father-Son campout. All the stars aligned to make this the most perfect weekend--good friends, the most perfect weather, and the kids actually SLEPT in the tent. We got a better night of sleep than we had all week (for some reason all the kids were waking up all the time the week before--it was miserable!). So it was so much fun and it made me feel like we could go camping a lot more often. I think we need to try and go at least in the spring and in the fall, depending on our babies.

Lucy and Eli having fun.

We even got a great family picture--always a bonus!

We told "scary stories" around the campfire before going to bed and Dane loved it. He was a little scared by a story about a coffin (although I'm pretty positive he doesn't know what a coffin is) but we were able to help him go to sleep and he didn't have any nightmares, haha. 

We did some hikes the night before and in the morning around the area. So fun.

These are the boys' "slingshots" they found, haha.