July 22, 2011
With the help of my parents, I took my kids for one night of camping. Dan elected to stay home, so we drove up to the campground midl-morning on Friday. It was our first time sleeping outdoors. We had lots of fun exploring the lake up at Payson Lakes and hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa and my sisters, but not so much fun sleeping.
The kids loved being outside, but Evie had a hard time settling down to take her afternoon nap. I wasn't too worried about Evie getting her nap--I figured she'd fall asleep if she felt tired enough--but then Evie started to have an emotional meltdown.
Christa brought some giant marshmallows and at some point it seemed like a good idea to calm Evie down by giving her a marshmallow to eat. Instead of eating it though, she decided to pull it apart and spread it all over her legs. I was totally paranoid about bears, so I wasn't so happy about Evie spreading marshmallow all over her legs. We got it washed off and Grandpa put Evie in his hiking backpack and took Evie for a walk. That finally put Evie to sleep. She got in a good nap and I got her settled for bed at what seemed like a good hour. For some reason, Evie didn't like sleeping outside and kept waking up screaming. I would get her settled and put her in her pack and play and then minutes later she'd be screaming again. She only stayed asleep when I sat up with her, so around one or two in the morning, I went and sat with her in my car. Grandma was nice enough to take a turn too, so I did get to do some sleeping lying down.
The next morning, we had some pancakes for breakfast and then headed home to try and recover from our long night.
Maybe next summer we'll try camping again and I'm hoping it will go better.
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