Back to our camping trip. 🙂
On Tuesday morning, I and the four older kids woke up pretty early and wanted to get the fire started for some hot cocoa. Unfortunately, someone (not mentioning names :)) left the matches out of the zip lock bag they were in to protect them from moisture, and sitting out all night in the humidity right after a major rainstorm, they were worthless. When it got late enough in the morning, ds12 found a ‘neighbor’ to borrow a flame from – he borrowed a clicker, lit our hurricane lamp with it, then biked back to return the clicker. When he returned, he found the hurricane lamp had blown out, because he had forgotten to close the opening. Nature is nothing if not a good teacher of natural consequences.
At this point, I decided that I’d let ds12 figure out how to remedy the situation, so I took the littles to the beach. It was 8 am by now, and there was only one older woman on the entire beach, doing laps. They had a great time playing – it was interesting that there are tiny fish that nibble their toes in the evening, but in the morning would run away from them. By the time we headed back, ds12 had found another ‘neighbor’ to borrow a tiny box of matches from, so the fire was going and the kids were enjoying hot cocoa. We changed the plan for breakfast from oatmeal to hamburgers, since the kids discovered that someone forgot to pack the dairy spoons, which made it impossible to eat any of the breakfast food we brought along. Like I said before, adaptability is a great trait!
By the time we finished breakfast, it was close to lunch time. Dd10 and ds12 went fishing while dd14 and ds9 hiked around the lake (something like 2 or 3 miles, not sure which trail they took). They were all back by 3 pm; ds12 had found the boat rental place and asked if they could go boating. I was willing to rent the boat for them, but I had to be there, and the littles were pretty desperate for a nap by the point, so I told him we could do it after they napped. But by then the boat place was closed, so instead we got the campfire ready for dinner. In the outdoors, you need to plan ahead if you want to cook a meal The kids climbed a huge hill/small mountain to gather firewood – gathering firewood and making a fire is a big part of camping- it takes a lot of work and it’s something kids find very gratifying!
The kids also biked over the camp store and bought a box of plastic cutlery, which made breakfast the next morning a lot easier!
We went to the beach after dinner again, and though we didn’t have the empty beach like the night before, a lot of people had left so we still had a nice amount of space to ourselves. We rarely go to beaches and being able to go every evening and morning while we were camping was really nice! The campfire that night was much more easily started than the night before, and again we enjoyed singing together until late into the night.
The next morning, we had an early breakfast which was easily accomplished since dd14 banked the fire the night before – they learned their lesson from the day before that it paid to think ahead and minimize unnecessary work! Then we all headed to the beach. After swimming for an hour and a half, we walked over to the boat rental place. We all got into lifejackets and I rented two paddle boats. After some discussion, we decided that dd14, ds12, ds9, and ds3 would go on one boat. I went on the second boat with dd10, ds5, and ds2. Part of what made it challenging to figure out is the two strongest people have to be in front to paddle, but the two seats in the rear back up to the front seats, so you can’t see the children there. So we had to work out the logistics of how to keep the littles safe and still have the oldest and most responsible people in front. This is why I put ds3 in the back of the first boat with ds9, and in my boat, held ds2 on my lap as I paddled (then he started to fall asleep so I moved him between me and dd10 to a kind of shelf where I kept my arm around him as he slept – dd steered so I didn’t need to use my arms for anything else!), while ds5 was able to safely keep himself in the boat without needing someone to keep a constant eye on him.
Dd10 and I chose to go around the entire lake, but the other kids had different ideas, so they took their path. It was a gorgeous, sunny, hot day – and about 40 minutes in, we needed some water. So we headed back to the dock, dd10 jumped out and got our big water bottle, and jumped back in. We passed it off to the other kids when our boats crossed paths. I really enjoyed boating with the kids; usually dh does this kind of stuff while I wait on shore with the littles.
Since we did similar but not the same things on different days, it blurs in my mind exactly when the kids went biking together, when they went on exploratory nature walks – they did a lot of that. Though it doesn’t sound like our days were that full, the time was comfortably used . We weren’t pressured to rush from one activity to another, which is critical for everyone to feel like they’re able to relax internally. But somehow there was always something to do.
We decided to leave a little on the earlier side on Thursday, so we could get back an hour beforeds9’s art lesson and dd14’s flute lesson, so they’d be able to shower and change without rushing. It was a good thing we started earlier than we originally planned, since as we were packing up, the skies got cloudy and the wind started to blow…..yes, another storm hit! It was amazing how fast everyone got everything into the van; we were able to beat what was a huge rainstorm that we drove through all the way home. It was kind of fun to come full circle, starting off with a rainstorm and then finishing off with a rainstorm!
The kids were so tired that every single one of them totally conked out on the way home – camping is tiring in a good, deep kind of way. We had a really, really nice time together, and created nice shared memories for everyone – and you never regret investing the time into creating memories!
Avivah
PS – on the cost side, it was a little under $53 for the campsite, and another $24 to rent two paddle boats for an hour. So less than $80 for a really nice vacation together!
