Camping Nineteen weeks and all is still going well. Almost halfway there, time sure is flying! I think the tiredness is finally letting up some, I still get tired when I do things, but at least I am not tired anymore when I don't even do anything. So I have good hopes that things are finally improving with the pregnancy exhaustion! I feel the baby move every day, although the movements still are not very strong and you can't feel them from the outside yet. Looking forward to being able to share those kicks with my husband and my other kids! We went camping this week, just for a few days and spent the rest of the time 'camping out' at a friend's house, sleeping in her play room with our sleeping bags. She has 8 kids, so together with our 5.5 kids, things were quite lively :-) Luckily the car didn't give us any more problems, replacing the battery last week seems to have done the trick! We had to postpone the camping a few times, first because the parks were full, then because of the weather, but on Tuesday we finally took the plunge. We loaded everything in the car, which was pretty much FULL and went to a nearby provincial park. We arrived at the end of the afternoon and spent some time setting up the tent. It is a new one, which I got at Kmart a few weeks ago. It was cheap and is supposed to sleep 10. I figured it would do for the rare times we go camping. I had planned on setting it up in the backyard first and applying seam sealer, but somehow I never had gotten around to it. We arrived late in the afternoon and checked in. The park was nice and quiet and we got a site in the woods and close to a bath room. There was nobody close to us, I like it that way! We took out the tent and tried to figure out how to set it up. It wasn't too hard, and the kids had fun 'helping' us. After a while, the tent was standing. It was big enough for the seven of us, but I doubt that you really would be able to fit ten grownups in there! Time for dinner! Croissants for the kids and sandwiches for us, very simple. Kate found a puddle and was happily splashing around in the mud and even sat down in it. Oh well! :-) Now we wanted to get some firewood, since there was no way we could have fitted that in the car with us. So we walked to the front gate, and waited for the ranger to come back from his bath room cleaning duties. It was getting dark now, so the timing was good. Got the wood and the kids all carried a log back to our site, Sander carried the rest. They were proud to be able to help with the wood carrying :-) Setting up the wood for the fire, using fire starters. Now were are the matches? Searching, searching, searching... Nowhere!!!!! Hmmm, this reminded me of our last camping trip, years ago, when we did the same thing. So I walked over to the closest camp site with a campfire, and asked them whether we could borrow some matches... LOL! Luckily they had quite a lot of spares and gave us a whole package! Getting the fire going was harder than we thought it would be. Let's say that both Sander and me won't have a very blooming career as pyromaniacs :-) Even with the fire starters, it still took us quite a few tries! The fire would look great when the fire starter was still going and then would die on us... Oh well, at least the kids didn't complain about it, but just roasted marshmallows while the fire starters worked and then waited patiently for the next try. We did finally get it going though! But it took quite a while. Time to get everybody to bed, they fell asleep rather easily, but then it was quite late already. We went to bed too, and then it started raining. And raining. And raining. In the morning we woke up and the first thing I heard was Tara saying 'My Mickey Mouse sleeping bag is wet!', then others complaining about wetness too. Oops! Guess I should have used the seam sealer after all! It wasn't too bad, but it was definitely wetter than it should have been! We spent a while cleaning up all the water with towels and then had breakfast in the tent (still raining). It finally stopped raining, so we let the kids run around outside and put up some clothes lines to hang the sleeping bags on to dry. We first did some grocery shopping and then put them outside. It kept raining on and off that day, every time we thought that things were clearing up and then it started raining again! I think it rained about 5 minutes every hour or so, so not too bad, but it was hard to dry things this way! Spent the afternoon at the beach at the park, even with the occasional rain, it was still fun. The temperature was nice and the kids didn't mind the rain. They had a great time. Hot dog dinner (in the tent again) this time with tons of rain and leaking tent! But after a while things cleared up again, so time for another campfire. We were getting better at it now and got it going in just one try! Kids roasted marshmallows, but the girls got tired of that after a while. So when I opened the car to get something out, they all 3 climbed in and started playing. Then a miracle happened: Jane fell asleep in her car seat! And Kate fell asleep on my lap. This followed by Tara wanting to go to sleep in the tent. We have never had them go down so easily, guess we need to camp more often! LOL Next day we packed everything and went back to my friends house, where we spent a few more days before heading home. It was a great vacation! Page design by mabear | Send email to Karen | Page last updated: Dec 29, 2001