Camping

We went camping at Wild Mountain campground in Taylors Falls a few weekends ago with some friends from church. It was quite the adventure with a 14 month old (and their 19 month old), but we had some awesome conversations, enjoyed the great outdoors, and practiced our tent-building, hot dog-grilling, bug-swatting skills.

It's really amazing the amount of stuff it takes to go camping. It's not like a hotel that provides towels and bedding. Our car was packed to the brim.

We took along some toys that could be easily washed off. The ball - "ba" was a hit with both kiddos.

We borrowed a tent from my parents (brand new/in the box) who seem to have everything anyone could ever need - it was perfect with plenty of room for a pack n play, our queen air mattress and our stuff. Tom could even stand up in it! Our friends Dana and Rosa were pretty impressed with our "porch."

Swimming in the campground pool!

I do believe this was dinner time.

Yep, kids look relaxed and sleepy. Tom is warmin' up some beans.

Can we talk about that grin?

Who needs a steel hot dog roasting fork when you have long sticks!

Sleeping was a bit rough. Gwendolyn went down pretty well around 8 pm despite having a pretty bad cough, so I thought we were in the clear, but she woke up about 2.5 hours later and was not a happy.........camper. Ha. 

But for reals.

Camping with a crying baby late at night makes this mama's heart race. I was so nervous that we were going to wake other people up, especially little Hudson who was sleeping right next door to us. Thankfully he slept through the entire thing. And her cough was definitely not good.

She basically refused to go back in her pack n play and wasn't too happy laying down with us at first, but then was so tired she eventually nursed to sleep. I was then able to gently and ever so quietly move her into a more comfortable position for both of us where she slept the rest of the night. Thank you Jesus!

I secretly kind of loved having her sleep with us. Neither Tom nor I slept well at all, but falling asleep under the stars (they were so beautiful), snuggling with her all night, and waking up to the peacefulness of being out in the middle of nowhere (at least it seemed like it) was worth the lack of sleep. 

It was definitely hot during the day, but the temp at night was perfection.

(Tom snapped this around 5 am. One of our best pics,wouldn't ya say? *smile.)

We slept on and off from 5-7 am and then we got up and had some coffee and breakfast around the camp fire.

Is she glaring at me? Never.

We spent most of the afternoon at a beach right outside of Taylors Falls on the Wisconsin side. 

We had debated about staying two nights, but we could tell Gwendolyn just wasn't feeling the best and needed good sleep, so after ice cream in town, we packed up our things and headed for home around 6 pm. 

Let me tell you this, a shower after camping is the best shower EVER. It was amazing.

We had a great time, and just love Dana and Rosa and little Hudson. They're great friends and we're so thankful to have them in our lives. Speaking of Dana...I can't believe I haven't shown you the amazing job he did with the new back splash in our kitchen back in March. I'm not a big decorator and I don't really care about home stuff, but I did get it in my head that it'd be cool to do a back splash and Tom was game for it! Sweet!

Before: 

And after:

He started at 7 am and was done when I got home from work at 5 pm. He's amazing. I can't believe we lived with that other stuff for almost 5 years - the tile makes such a difference!

We decided on a Wednesday night (during small group actually) to go ahead and do the tile since the only day that worked for him to do the work was the next day, Thursday and I really wanted it done for Gwendolyn's first birthday party that following Sunday. (Am I high maintenance?) So we're sitting in small group and talking about it and I'm like, "Yeah, I just don't think it'll work now since we don't have the supplies we need or tile picked out" and our small group leader, Ron, was like, "Well let's all go to Home Depot together!" So we did. And it was awesome. 

So Dana came over the next day and finished it, and we just love it. He rocks.

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So that was our camping adventure! We'll treasure the memories and laugh about how crazy we are to have taken a 14 month old camping.