Hanging out in the Tent

Grant "roughing it"
Luke with his new summer haircut.
Silly Sammy as always.

Karsten thought he was just in one big bounce house.

Yes, its been 2 years since our big adventure to Crater Lake (well, in August it will be). We had a lot of fun camping in Oregon, and I have to say that the weather was much nicer there. I always enjoyed freezing in the morning, whereas here you wake up sweating. But at least here I didn't have to worry about bears attacking our tent!

The fire has always been a point of contention with Joe and I. The first time we ever went camping, I handed him the matches and told him to go to it. He is the man after all. He fiddled around for awhile and then admitted that fire starting was not his strong point. I laughed and said that surely in all his army training and Ranger school he had learned to start a fire. He pointed out that smoke pretty much tells the enemy where you are, so it suddenly made sense.

Before Joe and I were married I worked at a summer camp in Maine. For two weeks before the girls arrived I did Life guard training as well as training to be a certified wilderness trip leader. So I learned to start a fire, and also to put up a tent in less than 10 mins and a bunch of other info that is stored somewhere in my brain. Joe did most of the grunt work for the fire, but couldn't get it to stay lit, so that is where I came in. When it comes to camping, Joe is really nice about letting me do most of the stuff since he knows I like it, and doesn't really question me when I'm adament about doing stuff a certain way. I can still set a tent up pretty fast, but since ours is so big and tall I sometimes need help with the high stuff, and he is great about helping me with that, even when I poke his eye out with a tent pole. Thank goodness he was wearing glasses! Sorry honey!

It is very very hard to camp with 4 kids. You are constantly on alert and you don't really get to relax. But hopefully the boys are making lots of memories and will enjoy it more as they get older. I think next time we will just pitch the tent in the backyard!