Roughing It

This past weekend, we packed up and went camping with a group of people from our church. I grew up going camping every summer but haven't gone in years. This was our first camping trip as a family. Hubby left work early on Friday and we headed out about 1:30. We arrived at Lake Canton about 2 hours later. A couple friends set up the tent for Hubby and I got JJ ready to go swimming.


A little while later we headed down to the lake where most everyone was. JJ first played in the sand under a tent. He loved every minute of it!



After a while, a friend came and took JJ into the water. He smiled and squealed the whole time!



I joined them a bit later and brought his blow-up turtle with me. We put him in it and he splashed and played and laughed! He was definitely a very happy little boy! I honestly think he could spend all day digging in dirt and playing in water. We have an outdoors-y boy on our hands!



That night, we sat around the campfire, talked, and make s'mores. Yum! I haven't had those in years and I must say, they were a highlight! JJ hadn't slept all day so he crashed at about 8:30. JJ and I shared a pop-up camper with a friend and her son. I went to bed about 12:30 but wasn't able to sleep because it was so windy. Little did I know how bad it would actually get. The camper was rocking back and forth and shaking and shuddering. Kelly and I were afraid the thing was going to fall apart! She watched JJ while I went to check on Hubby in his tent. I figured if we were feeling the wind this badly, he must be really having a time of it. I got to his tent and there wasn't even a breeze! That's when I decided to take JJ and join Hubby in his tent. I got JJ to finally go back to sleep and was ready to go to sleep myself. It was about 3:00 at this time and I hadn't slept for a single minute. That's when it all started. The wind picked up and the tent started folding and bending. When the tent was laying on top of me that's when I knew we needed to get out of there. I woke hubby up and we decided to head to the car. Everyone else had the same idea because we were all running to our vehicles. We sat in the car and watched as 70 mph winds tore the campground apart. Things were flying everywhere! We looked for our tent a bit later and it was plastered against the bathrooms several yards away. We had gotten out just in time! When the winds finally calmed down we decided to try to get a little bit of sleep. Our tent was no longer usable so we tried the camper. I slept for about an hour. When I woke up, it was about 8:00 and the winds were still pretty high so we all decided leave early and headed home. Amazingly, JJ slept through all of it (except for about an hour between the transfer from camper to tent). We, unfortunately, did not and were exhausted. It was a fun and crazy weekend and I can't wait to do it again!

Here is a video Hubby took of us playing in the water. I wish I would have thought to video the storm as it was tearing up our camp site. What a great first-camping-trip memory that would be!