our first camping trip

A few weekends ago, I suggested to Nick that we take the boys camping for a night. Yes, it was actually my idea, shocking I know! Even though I hate (and I mean HATE) camping now, as a kid we use to go camping all the time and I really want the boys to have that experience. Which means I will have to suffer through it, well at least until they're scouts and then I'm done!

After looking at a few places online, I booked us for one night at Kayak Point Park. Although the camping trip was mostly a success, I think we will wait until next summer to attempt it again. Cole had a blast but Blake is not at a good age for camping. Something about a little boy crawling through the dirt and mud, picking up every rock or stick he finds and trying to eat it, and making a b-line to the fire every chance he got, well it's just not much fun! That's not even counting being in the same tent as him and having to let him "scream it out" for 15 min at 1 AM before he will finally go to sleep. I am excited for a time when both boys are a little older and they can both run around and get messy and do boy thing, LOL!

Mr. Messy himself... that bottle got so disgusting and dirty!




Cole was so excited to roast things on the fire. As soon as we started setting up camp, he found his little chair and the roasting sticks and then sat in front of the fire pit demanding a fire. When we finally did get a fire going, he roasted 4 hotdogs (ate less than half of each) and a bunch of s'mores. It was his favorite part of the trip.

Blake was happiest while he was eating, surprise surprise.

Before going to bed, I told Nick that we needed to take our garbage to the dumpster so an animal wouldn't get into it overnight. He rolled his eyes and said we didn't need to. I went to brush my teeth and when I came back to the site I saw Nick and Cole sitting by the fire with the flashlight lighting up the trees and wouldn't you know it, there was a raccoon getting into our garbage!

It was okay though because Cole loved it!

In the morning, it was pretty cold so Blake and I hung out in the tent for awhile while Nick cooked breakfast. Blake had about 5 layers of clothing on so he was probably the warmest out of all of us.

Then we went on a hike. Nick had gone down the trail while we were all sleeping and told Cole that he had seen a couple huge slugs. Cole is obsessed with slugs, so he was so excited to find them.

Before finding any slugs, he found this snail. He picked it up and wanted to take it home. I told him we could but he would have to carry it until we got back to the site. He ended up carrying that thing for almost an hour! On the way back to the site he found some big slugs and carried one of those back to the site too. It was really hard and disgusting trying to get all that slime off of his hands.

And yes, now we have a pet slug and snail. Sluggy and Snaily (Cole is reallllllly inventive with names, huh?). Actually we only have Sluggy because Snaily was kind of a drama queen. It kept going into hibernation if everything wasn't just right (the temp, the moisture, the food). I don't want to put THAT much effort into these "pets" and who wants a snail that never comes out of it's shell? I convinced Cole to let it go. It was a little heartbreaking because as the snail was *slowly* crawling away , Cole whispered "I love you so so so much snaily." I almost let him take it back at that point, but I had already told him that if we kept it, it would die soooo I didn't want to confuse the kid.