Yesterday, I wrote about walking in the woods. And yes, it was all true. But here's the thing: beautiful words about how I meet God in the details of walking in the woods cannot quite capture the entirety of the experience that was our camping trip.
We indeed enjoyed a lovely hike, perfect temperatures, and a successful tent and campsite set-up (ok, ok mostly by Adam with the children's "help" while I lay in the hammock and read Orange is the New Black). However, the children found themselves in rare bickering and disobedient form. I always feel somewhat cheated when this happens on a special trip. Like, if we are taking the time to do for our kids something we wouldn't necessarily be inclined to do on our own (camping would fall into this category for me), they should reward that sacrifice with excellent behavior in order to create maximum family-fun memories. Am I right? Someone forgot, apparently, to give Jayci and Caden this memo. They were decidedly not on their best behavior.
I tried not to lose my patience when they asked a million and twelve times if we were almost to camp (Caden, in particular, seemed confused as to our destination and the difference between camping and camp grace). Upon arrival, everything was taking entirely-too-long for their liking, and the endless complaining about drove me to the brink. Deep cleansing breaths and small jaunts deeper into the woods for a few minutes to cool-mama-down were in order.
Anyways, we pulled ourselves together enough to enjoy our afternoon and to cook a nice dinner over the fire. Although, of course,we forgot plates and utensils and ate potatoes with our fingers from red solo cups. We also forgot the marshmallows (which were unfortunately in the bag with the plates), and this caused much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Caden is in the phase of killer-loud-and-obnoxious-fake-cry, FYI.
With both kids messy already, they drank a cup of hot chocolate (in place of marshmallows) by head-lamp, and we got them at least semi-cleaned up for bed. Sighing with relief, we slipped into camp chairs next to the fire and listened to the kids giggle in their tent. Looking at Adam with eyebrow cocked, we made bets on how well the tent-sleeping thing was going to well. Hint: we both thought not-neccessarily-well, but I fell on the side of decidedly less-optimistic than Adam did.
We indeed enjoyed a lovely hike, perfect temperatures, and a successful tent and campsite set-up (ok, ok mostly by Adam with the children's "help" while I lay in the hammock and read Orange is the New Black). However, the children found themselves in rare bickering and disobedient form. I always feel somewhat cheated when this happens on a special trip. Like, if we are taking the time to do for our kids something we wouldn't necessarily be inclined to do on our own (camping would fall into this category for me), they should reward that sacrifice with excellent behavior in order to create maximum family-fun memories. Am I right? Someone forgot, apparently, to give Jayci and Caden this memo. They were decidedly not on their best behavior.
I tried not to lose my patience when they asked a million and twelve times if we were almost to camp (Caden, in particular, seemed confused as to our destination and the difference between camping and camp grace). Upon arrival, everything was taking entirely-too-long for their liking, and the endless complaining about drove me to the brink. Deep cleansing breaths and small jaunts deeper into the woods for a few minutes to cool-mama-down were in order.
Jayci's attitude towards me pretty much the entire time can be summed up with this one picture. You might think she's just joking around and sticking out her tongue for the camera, but look at her eyes (it's all in the eyes).
Anyways, we pulled ourselves together enough to enjoy our afternoon and to cook a nice dinner over the fire. Although, of course,we forgot plates and utensils and ate potatoes with our fingers from red solo cups. We also forgot the marshmallows (which were unfortunately in the bag with the plates), and this caused much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Caden is in the phase of killer-loud-and-obnoxious-fake-cry, FYI.
We adjusted sleeping bags and tried to figure out how to pad the ground adequately and zipped and unzipped and tucked and re-tucked. Finally, Caden fell asleep and when Jayci grew silent for a few moments we assumed she was sleeping too. We sipped our own hot chocolate and talked quiet under the stars. Jayci, however, ended up not-so-much-sleeping as getting-sick and freaking-all-the-way-out. She was feeling-some-kinda-way such that Caden woke up, and everything got disastrous and we ended up packing up the camp at midnight and heading home.
And I spent the next day doing approximately 17 loads of laundry to disinfect and clean-up, and I'm counting that as my walking for the day. Because laundry is far-more exhausting than walking.
So there you have it: real talk about camping trips and walking in the woods.