Well tomorrow the Heldts are off to Lake San Antonio for our church's camping trip. This will be our first attempt at camping so it should be...interesting! We won't have any fancy camping gizmos but we HAVE been stocking up on some necessary items. We bought a tent (the model is called the "Vacation Home", how luxurious...), sleeping bags for the kids, a lantern, a little grill (in a REALLY cheesy box that fully refers to the grill as a "hot little number"), a little stove with two burners, a tablecloth, chairs, a tarp, a big ice chest, lifejackets for the three oldest kids, a little shade thingy for Kaitlyn, a fun raft/boat for the older kids. I have more to buy today (groceries, chairs for the kids, propane, etc.) and then tomorrow we'll probably pick up whatever I forget to buy today. (People who camp, this is such a subculture. It cracks me up!) Kevin set up the tent already to make sure he knows how to do it (which he does). The kids are SO EXCITED and every day Anna asks, "Are we going on the camping trip today?"
Will we survive the weekend??? Only time will tell!
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
14 comments:
Going camping with kids is more work than you can ever imagine, but more fun and rewarding than almost anything you could do...
Good luck, and we'll see you there!
glad you guys are going! what's all the hard stuff about camping w/ kids, so i can be prepared???
Have a blast!!
brianna--i am more in awe of your family every day. i told cade i don't even want to attempt camping until we don't have to pack diapers and cribs. you guys are so brave! have a great time. it was great to see you last night. let's hang out soon and let the kids play.
well joy, "brave" is probably not the right word...naive is more like it!!!! provided we all return in one piece let's totally hang out! such fun last night, thanks for all the cookies and garlic!
I would say that you are in trouble if you were going camping by yourselves but since there will be lots of extra hands around, you guys will have fun! We decided not to go camping by ourselves anymore after a debacle including Bennett and an axe last year!
ok people are starting to scare me! what would happen if we were by ourselves??? (we're not taking an axe, so no worries there! :) )
Just make sure there's no poison oak near your campsite that the kiddos can get into. Just a forewarning, your kids will probably do great since they are so excited and a little bigger, but Matthew freaked out in the middle of the night because he didn't know where he was, even though we were right there. We LOVE camping, and have all the gear, but are not sure we want to brave it again until he's older and we can contain him a little better...he wanted to run everywhere! Have a blast and we can't wait to see pictures and hear all about it!
how fun!! we need a luxuriously-sized "vacation home" too. we are outgrowing our tent!
Brianna, don't worry. Camping is a lot of fun but yes, it is a lot of work too (doing dishes outsides is much more work than loading them into the washer!). It's totally worth it though and it is a little subculture. The first few times you go camping you inevitably forget something...but you're lucky that you happen to be camping right next to the Gibson Campers R Us! We've done it a ton, and I think I have it down pretty solid. (Great, now watch me totally forget something vital!)
And hey, I'm TENT camping with an 11 week old...although I bet next year when he's toddling around will be tougher! It'll be fine, really!
And, no poison oak near the campsites, so no worries there...
Besides, camping at a lake is a lot easier than out in the middle of a national forest...there's a marina with a store where you can buy a ton of stuff and you even have cell phone reception...how bad can it be?!
jeannett this is what i'm thinking! we're totally doing simple food, etc. to minimize our workload (being that it's our first time and that we will have little ones running all about. we'll do something more exciting next time.) i figure the hardest part will be them not having naps, and getting 3 very excited kids to go to sleep (and not bug all the other campers with their giggling!) but other than that, i think it'll be tons of fun, and i really hope we don't end up having to mooch off of you guys too much! i'm gonna look at that list you emailed me again, it's super helpful!!
you guys will do awesome! the kids will love it. i always remind myself, i did not have all these children to sit around my house. KEEP LIVING LIFE!
Don't let everyone scare you. Phillip and I took infant Eliot, Zak and everything but 1 tentpole and food (a long story!) camping and have great memories of the event (we spent an uncomfortable night in the car). We've gone camping every year since (2x last year with a nursing infant at the beginning of the summer and a squirmy scooter at the end of the summer.) and the kids just love it. The hard part is keeping people and things sort of clean and making sure the kids don't wander off but surrounded by a church family it shouldn't be too hard! See you there!
i hope you had a great time. we hope to start taking a few weekends in the outdoors a year as the kids get older. maybe we can do it togehter sometime.
Post a Comment