Camping

We've been camping a few times this summer. It has been a fiasco every single time!! But the kids love it, so we keep going. Ha!

Old Faithful barely pulled the camper ;) This is actually not our camper. Ours was being used and Aaron had a bee in his bonnet to go camping THAT WEEKEND. Who am I to argue? I've been begging him to camp more often for 3 years. Some friends of ours let us borrow their pop-up, which is just a bit bigger than ours.

 This time, we camped up on a friends' property north of interstate. Middle of nowhere, quite literally.  No running water, but we did have electricity (which is a good thing because we needed the heater!). And it rained almost the entire 5 days we were there. The kids made the best of it and we did get one afternoon of no rain and they went exploring!

 Beautiful views. The windmill drove us crazy at night...it needed some WD-40!! haha

 This used to be an old farmstead, but the only thing left is a machine shed and parts of an old silo and some pens.

 Aaron was helping clear some pasture land. It was a fair distance from where we parked the camper, so I was surprised when Jacob said he wanted to go see Daddy by himself. All he had to do was follow the tracks, but he's not usually one to venture off by himself. By the end of the week, even Isaac was walking back and forth by himself! I loved seeing the boys go off together, playing and exploring.

 One disadvantage of this camper was that the inside stove couldn't be used because of a leak. Which normally, when camping, wouldn't be a problem at all. The stove can be hooked up on the side of the camper. The only problem was that it was raining most of the time we camped! I had a couple of crockpot meals planned, but hadn't accounted for rain & cooking outside on a propane stove!! We made it work and ate quite well, if I do say so myself. Anna & I are the only ones that really like sandwiches, so I've had to get creative with camping meals!!

 We smashed in the exersaucer for Grace and I am SO glad that we did!! She wasn't quite crawling at this point but she was mobile. There is NOWHERE for a mobile baby to hang out! She loved it. And it was a lifesaver for me!

 Even camping, I brought my Young Living along! ;)

 While Grace napped one afternoon, I left Anna in the camper with my phone and walked up to hang out with Aaron. I told her to text me (not enough reception to call) if she needed me to come back. She took her first selfie. ;)

 I used her blanket to cover up the outlets and she had a little bitty corner to sit in.

 Active, active baby!

 Jacob hauled his bulldozer up the hill to play while Aaron worked.

 Grace thought she was pretty hot stuff, driving!

 She told me she would love to help me clean up, so she washed dishes for me! :)

 I used a couple of totes to pack food and games in, so that we could keep them outside and not take up precious space inside. I'm REALLY glad I made the kids pick games and movies and activities to pack since we ended up being stuck in the camper a LOT.

 For some reason, it took me several days to figure out we could play in the big, empty machine shed! I sat with Grace and had the kids play "Red Light, Green Light". It took up a good chunk of time.

 The kids found some beautiful flowers for me on their exploration.

 These two...

 Waaaaaaay up there, the kids went exploring. 

 They almost made it to the top of the hill!

 And thankfully, I also packed my Boba. She loves riding on my back and I spent one afternoon pacing back and forth trying to get her to sleep.

As stressful as it was, the kids still had fun and they still want to go camping! Aaron....not so much! Ha!! I forgot to mention that the first night, we about burned up the place. The extension cord we used got so hot that it melted to the camper plug. I woke up at 2am to pitch black silence. And it quickly got COLD! We ran the cord right through a corner opening in the camper to have at least one space heater going (it really was cold enough to need them!). Aaron didn't sleep much the whole night because he was so afraid the cord was going to catch fire! Our friend brought us another cord the next evening, so we just spent the cloudy, rainy days in the semi-darkness because we still couldn't get the camper plug in to work. We made do. ;)