Once Every Three Years

We go camping. So it has been about that long since we took our three boys to the mountains in Oregon and camped in a tent. Zowie, lots of fun but so much hassle that we vowed to never do it again. I mean, take a baby camping in a tent? Come on! So, like childbirth, with time we forgot the pain of family camping and thought, gee wouldn't it be fun to take all FOUR kids (including a baby) camping in a tent in the 100 degree (with heat index) weather. Sure, why not. The departure did not set the stage for success, after packing up the van we had to stop by Walmart for some propane, then to the pharmacy for a prescription and then we were off for the approximately one hour drive to camping fun. Except, hey, did you back the hotdogs and sausages for dinner? Um, no. Ok, so we had to drive back to our house before we even left town to put the food in the cooler full of ice. Sammy was screaming, "No, I don't want to go home!". Once we packed up the weenies we were really off this time to a camping theme park called "Jellystone Park" which has a water park with the Yogi The Bear theme. It was a pretty cool park, we set up our tent a short walk from the pool which had about four water slides. Once you got to the pool it was nice and cool but keep in mind we have to hold on to Sam and Karsten at all times or they will sink to the bottom of the pool, which Sam did just once but I caught him pretty quick. I guess that's a family tradition, I remember at least once pulling Luke out from under the water being just a few feet away from him. Anyway, swimming was great. Luke went down the really tall slide a several times but Grant chickened out after very cautiously climbing three fourths the way up the ladder. Once we got back to the camping site we started to notice that we were the only people in an actual tent. Every one else was in a pop-up camper or a camping trailer. Of course all of those campers and trailers have air conditioning. The hotdog and sausage roast was fun, me and the big boys played frisbee and relaxed. Finally the sun began to set and the time came to start a fire for the marshmallow roast. We had some pre-made logs that you buy in the store left over from our Oregon camping days so we gathered some pine needles and tried to get the logs started. I worked on those things for about a half an hour and couldn't get them to burn. Of course every two seconds we had to pull the boys back from the fire pit, yes fire and boys, they go together like...you know what I mean. Then I pulled out the instructions for the logs and read that that they were made in California and complied with all kinds of environmental regulations and all that, we decided that they were not supposed to burn because smoke hurts animals and trees. So me and the boys went on a mission to gather dried branches that would burn so we could roast some marshmallows! Eventually we got the fire started but there is some disagreement about who was responsible, Sara says that I failed to start the fire and her vigilance in stoking and arranging the sticks just right was the reason while I say that my highly combustible lumber did the trick. The boys had been begging all day to get into the tent so we finally let them go in to what they assumed was a fort / playhouse. So what they did NOT want to do was sleep. I was ready do sit in my camping chair and get some hydration, aka, Budweiser and relax. But we had to get up and threaten the kids every five seconds to be quiet and stop jumping around. Once Sara and I got in the tent the other fun started. Some folks over at one of the cabins had just discovered alcohol and apparently this affected their hearing because they had to yell everything and turn their music up way too loud. This went on until about 3:30 AM, of course we were still up because Karsten would not fall asleep and we were wrestling with him to stay on our blow-up mattress. Not that we would have slept anyway in the heat retaining tent with the other neighbors going in and out of their car every five minutes which turned on their truck headlights which shined directly into, guess where? Did I mention the petting zoo just right next to our camping area? Really nice except that one of the animals was a rooster who must be on daylight savings time or something because he started crowing at 4:00 AM but it was definately not time to get up. He kept hitting the snooze too because he crowed for at least an hour. Once morning came we went swimming one more time and then packed it all up for the drive back home. Maybe it will be easier when the kids are bigger?