Camping (mis)adventures

We went camping tonight. Yes, you read that right - tonight.

Let me go back a couple of months...Mason has been begging to go camping for that long. He would sigh and say, "When is it summer?" "Why, Mason?" "Because then we can go camping. How many days until summer? How many minutes?"

We were going to go camping last weekend, but that didn't work out, so we were all planning on going this weekend. Looking at the weather I was a little concerned it wouldn't happen, but we were optimistic, and didn't let a weather report of "Chance of thunderstorms, winds of 20-30 mph, rain showers after midnight, lows in the mid-30s" deter us. Surely it would pass us.

Well, no.

We arrived at the beautiful campground about 6pm and got a fire started and the tent up, despite the wind. ("Sit on that corner, Elise! Don't move for another second, Sammy!") Maybe I should mention that we have the Taj Mahal of tents. It is mammoth - it has a doggy door and 3 rooms. Seriously. Once the tent was up, Elise and Sammy spent most of the time in the car, out of the wind, while Mason and Stephen unloaded.

While I got dinner going, Stephen grabbed some rope from the car and Macgyvered it to hold up the tent (tied to the resident hitching rack. Again, seriously.) We even moved the tent so the wind wouldn't collapse it on us. And then the wind changed. When we were in the tent Mason asked me what "collapse" meant. I told him to wait a couple of seconds and he would see. Sure enough, it collapsed on the left, and then on the right. He gets it now.

About 8:45pm, after some yummy pizzas and s'mores, the kids and I retired to the tent to see if we would be able to stay warm enough. We decided that we would...and that is when Mason learned what "collapse" means. Elise was in tears - "I want to go HOME!!!", the boys were starting to freak out, so I called it a night. I put Elise in the car and started packing up. Stephen came in to help, and sent Sammy to the car, too.

He arrived to Elise getting out - she had thrown up ALL over my guitar, the front console and the floor mats. Oh, joy. I covered it all with towels (bless the inspiration that had me bring them!), calmed the poor girl down, and rushed to finish loading the car back up.

The wind was picking up and the clouds were gathering. Elise had just given back dinner. Sammy and Mason were crying because they were afraid of the wind. We are now home in our nice, warm beds. We had a great 3 1/2 hours of camping! We hope to do it again soon! Now we know what 20-30 mph winds can do to a tent, and will be more wise in the future.