What a nice getaway...

John and I had such a nice time this weekend, just the two of us. It's amazing how quickly we can set up and break down camp without the time spent fussing over our children. However, even though it was peaceful, there were often times, it was so obvious that a part of our life was missing this trip out. When the people pulled in either side of us, and set up, as their children were running around, we couldn't help but think how much our children would have loved camping near so many other children. On our walk through the woods, we'd look at trees, and say, "The kids would love climbing those!", and we also took time to notice the stumps and roots along the way, commenting that one if not both of our children would have tripped over them for sure.




We had our camp set up by 6:30 Friday night, and sat down at the picnic table and made our sandwiches. Then we cleaned up our dishes, and built a fire. John laughed as I pulled out the marshmallows, since there were no kids with us. It's camping, and I'm a kid at heart, so yeah, I brought the marshmallows. Fire+camping=marshmallows. Period! When we were setting things up, we realized I forgot to pack the space heater! What was I thinking? However, we did get the chance to test the furnace in the camper, and I'm happy to say it works well. At some point during the night, it began raining and rained pretty much most of the day on Saturday. In the morning, we were standing under our awning, enjoying our coffee, when we heard a rumble of something unknown, that sounded like quite the crash. I said "That didn't sound good!" John suggested, perhaps someone was moving something around, until he walked around the side of our camper, and peaked into the site next to us. He said, "Oh Lord, that's not good!" In the site next to us, a family was set up in an old Coleman popup. So old, they had an old window unit a/c cut into the front wall. When they set up Friday night, apparently, the father neglected to put down the stabilizer jacks, which is why he was in the predicament he was in now. The rumbling was all the contents of his camper, including a cooler, quickly being redistributed to one end of his camper. He'd gone in to get something, and when he stepped to the back of the camper, up it went. Straight up on end! I hurried around the corner, and suggested perhaps we go and give them a hand, however, the mother and her children had managed to grab the front end and pull it back down. They were laughing about it, and everyone was okay. He also lowered the stabilizing jacks.

We walked down to the canoe launch area to determine the weather, as well as tides. We decided the rain had let up enough, and the tide was in far enough, we'd give canoeing a shot. We had a really nice time, despite the rain. As we were loading the canoe up, and shifting it into the water, there was an older gentleman standing on the dock, with his also large dog. He laughed, and said, "How are you going to get that big dog to stay still in the canoe?" We replied, "we're about to find out!" Yes, we took Callie with us in the canoe, and she did a very good job. She didn't jump around, or pace back and forth. It seemed as if she understood, in a canoe even a dog has to sit still. Eventually, she layed down and seemed quite bored with the situation. Until, I reeled in a fish, then she was very interested. John said, "Suzanne, don't start something that's going to get us all wet!" I played it low key, and she just sat there, watching. We didn't keep our fish, and actually only caught two small ones. But, at the end of the day, we could say, we went fishing, and caught something! It's a good day! Around 2:30, it seemed to be getting "late", but when we checked the time on the GPS, it gave us the accurate time; much earlier than we expected. The clouds were rolling in, the air was cooling off, and it was drizzling rain on us. The tide was going out, and we knew judging the tides at the launch early in the morning, if we didn't head back now, we wouldn't be getting back anytime soon! The sky seemed to clear later on, and we went for a nice walk in the woods. During our walk, we found a stick, and sent Callie chasing it several times. She followed it right into the creek, but once she got a mouthful of salty water, she dropped the stick, and headed back to the shore. She had no interest in going back into the water after that. We picked the stick up, and tossed it again, but it must have still had salty water on it, because she didn't want that, either, she rolled her lips to say it was a very distasteful stick!

Earlier in the day, we had considered going home, since it appeared to be looking like a miserable day. However, we stuck it out, and with the exception of the slight drizzle in the late afternoon, it cleared up to be a nice evening. The stars were even visible. That's good! We were glad we stayed, since it was a clear night, and we built a very nice fire, with marshmallows. By 9:30, we decided it was time to go shower, and then snuggle into bed and watch a movie. We'd started watching Pirates of the Caribbean earlier in the day, and never finished that. However, we fell asleep in the evening to Last of the Mohicans. We concluded that even though it was raining, it wasn't so bad with just the two of us, plus the dog. We agreed, had the kids been with us, it would have been miserable, and we would have left early for certain.

When we woke up Sunday morning, the sky had cleared. We heard it raining sometime during the night, but it had stopped by morning. When we checked the clock, we realized we'd stayed in bed until 8am! That's nearly unheard of in our house. Our children are always up by 7:30 at the very latest! We got up, made some breakfast, went for a long walk, then came back and packed up. Amazingly we did all that, and were still checking out by 11am. I'm not sure how many more times I will have to sweep out the camper before I get out all that sand! When we made it home, we had to set the camper up again, to allow the canvas bunkends to dry. I hope by Tuesday, it will be dry enough to close it up until our next family outing.

At lunch today, with Grandma and her friends, Daniel told Mr.Schreir that his mommy and daddy were going to kiss when they're camping. Mr.Schreir told Daniel to be sure to ask Daddy if he kissed her! Yes, he did...

I don't know how it has happened, or why it seems to be that every time we go camping one of our children, usually Daniel ends up with a fever when we return. It is amazing, that even though Daniel didn't go with us, when I put him to bed, he was running a fever of 102. How does this happen? I guess, like fire+camping=marshmallows, Daniel + camping= fever, regardless of where in the equation the camping and Daniel are.