Small Group Camping Trip

Back in May, our small group took a camping trip.  A TENT camping trip.  For THREE nights. My use of all caps should tell you that I did not think it would be a good idea.  Daniel and I used to tent camp before we had kids, and we always enjoyed it.  We took Audrey on two different one night trips, one when she was 9 months and one when she was two.  It went fairly well, but we had not been camping since Isla was born. I envisioned my prissy girls being whiny and bored and unable to sleep in the tent with all of us together.

I was getting ready for a garage sale and about ready to sell our camping gear.  My general rule is that if we haven't used something within the past year, then we get rid of it.  The camping gear had been sitting unused for four years.  So I said we either need to use it or sell it!

We talked to some members of our small group and decided that we would use it along with our friends!  We signed up for a three night camping trip over Memorial Day weekend.  We ended up having 10 adults and 7 kids with us, ages 6 months-7 years.

I was skeptical that a three night tent camping trip with kids would be the best way to jump back into the camping scene.  But we gave it a try, and it ended up being so much fun!

This was our main camping area set up, with two more tents on another site.

Bug catchers extraordinaire!

Isla love playing this checkers game.  She didn't follow the rules 100% of the time, but for a three year old, she was really good!

The campground had a little lake and beach area.  The kids had fun swimming, even though the water was so very cold.

At first, Isla would only get her toes wet.

Then she moved into ankle deep water.

Then up to her knees!

And before we knew it, Amy had convinced her to go all the way into the water...with her clothes on!!

One day, we took a little family paddleboat ride.  Despite the look on Isla's face in this picture, we all enjoyed it.

This camping trip was all about the food.  We all were on Pinterest beforehand, and we found all sorts of yummy camping recipes to try, and then everything turned out to be delicious!  Here are a couple of my successes.  This is bannock bread, kind of like a pancake biscuit.  It was SO good with a little butter and jam on it.

And this is a Hawaiian Chicken Stack Foil Dinner. It was good too.  This reminds me that I need to make this in real life, not just for camping trips.

Of course, we also had s'mores!

The weather was really perfect for most of the time, until the last day when it was super crazy windy.  This was the day that Amy made donuts with the kids.  Despite the wind, it was still a fun treat!

I was trying to take pictures the captured the craziness of the sustained 25+ mph winds all day long.  It was hard to capture in a photograph though!  This was Steve and Amy's tent, which looked permanently crooked all day with the wind blowing it.  This was especially problematic on our last night, when the wind continued to blow along with some rain, which blew right inside their tent!

The kids were getting a little restless on the last day, especially with the wind blowing everything around. So we took them up to the camp store to the little mining station they had there.  They each got to mine for "jewels" and they had a lot of fun.

The kids ate dinner on top of the Millers truck one night. A fun idea until they started spilling their drinks all over each other.

Overall, it was a great trip!  I came home ready to plan our next camping trip.  My enthusiasm has waned a little as time goes by, but I do think we will definitely go camping again with our girls...and hopefully our friends too!