The Great Outdoors

Well, for those of you that know me well, I am definitely more of a Westin girl, than a great outdoors girl. I much prefer "roughing it" at a 4 or 5 star hotel and I know that my love for luxury goes far above my actual means! However, we did go camping a couple weekends ago, and it was actually for the second time in less than a year. Does that move me from novice camper to the status of amateur? I am sure that is debatable- although much to my credit I nearly single handedly put up our 9 man, two room tent, on my own. Luke who had to work until 6 on Friday, had to join us later, so we had to get there early to put up the tent. Luckily, we had friends with us, and we all pitched in to get camp set up before dark. It was much more of a challenge this second endeavor into the camping world, for Jack was not walking the last time we went, and this time, it was as if a whole new door of possibilities had been opened to him. He certainly kept us busy the whole weekend, and wanted to do whatever his older sister and the bigger kids were doing. He had several little girls who took him under their wing and were a big help in hoisting him up onto the playground equipment ( which I must say, has definitly not been investigated by code enforcement any time in the last 2 decades- lets just say, that the monkey bars were somewhere in the range of 10 feet high - not kidding.- it was a little bit of a shady playground situation- but the kids enjoyed it immensly) Our camp was actually directly in front of the playground, which turned out to be the hangout of the entire camp facility. The kids loved being outside all weekend and getting VERY dirty. I think that every time I looked at Rylie she had dirt all over her face, and I mean all over. We finally figured out why. Everytime the wind would blow her hair in her face, she would take her hands, which had been digging in dirt, and wipe it away. Hence, the dirty face. But, hey, we were camping. Sleeping was pretty good, except for the first night, when our air mattress had a leak, and we ended up on the floor around 2 am. But thanks to Luke getting a patch the next day, Saturday night we slept great. Most of all, the kids slept awesome, and that is something to be very excited about. Since I was anticipating not-so-great-sleeping, since they were away from their norm, but I think it was due to such sheer exhaustion that they literally passed out, and slept all night both nights.

I will say that there were an unnerving amount of spiders at this campsite, and for anyone that knows me, I am only a slight arachnaphobe ( slight- meaning- huge, paranoid, borderline schizo- when it comes to creatures with 8 legs). Remarkably, somehow, I did not crawl out my skin, when I came within 2 inches of walking straight into a web, which held a nice, big, fat, brown spider. Amazingly, I did not faint and pack up our things and head for the nearest Hilton, when a party of 3 spiders decided to greet us in the sink on our inaugaral visit to the restroom. No, somehow, although, I do think it took a lot out of me, I reached down to somewhere within and resolved to be a "big girl" and " get over it- bugs are part of camping" - and actually once I stopped noticing and looking for every creepy crawly, I instantly had a much better time.

Now, there is definitely nothing that compares to that Westin Heavenly bed, and I am not going to be giving up my hairdryer any time soon, but I will say that the quality time spent with family and close friends, was unbeatable. It was wonderful to be out and enjoying God's creation, and have a weekend unplugged from the TV and internet for a change. I don't know, might I be on my way from amateur to pro? If I start asking for camping gear for my birthday and christmas, someone shake me, please.