camping with family

These days our lives are filled with all things busy. School started. Dance started. Homework started. I'm finding myself working more hours than the last several years. I brought home a pretty hefty bag of work this weekend. This doesn't make for much crafting or blogging time, I tell you. I have a craft show coming up in November, so I better get busy! 

We did take time out about a month ago to go camping with Greg's sister, Wendy, and her family. 

They camp in a 5th wheel. We camp in a tent. Honestly, the tent is fun except when somebody has to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The campground where we usually go has pretty nice bathrooms, considering. We went to a different place closer to home this time & the bathrooms were g.r.o.s.s.! Let's just say I had a little quiet time with nature a few times in the middle of the night.

The weather was chilly ~ a nice reprieve from the still hot days. Shoot, our days are still hot now, even in the middle of October. The hatchets and axes came out and fun was had by all.

Greg taught the kids how to use the hatchet to chop wood.

Everyone got a turn.

He even taught the littlest cousin.

He was pretty proud of himself!

Check out Heather's concentration.

Do you think it run in the family?

Just before it was Sam's turn to use the ax (and while he wasn't looking), Wendy lodged the ax into the stump pretty hard to make him work at getting it out. Just as expected, he couldn't get it out.

Uh, I guess the joke was on Wendy, cuz she had quite the time getting it out herself. If I remember correctly, Greg had to get involved.

Yup, everything is fun and games until the ax gets stuck.

Grandma & Papa came up for the day with their little doggie.

There was a lot of sitting, eating, and relaxing.  Can you see the dog waiting, hoping that Chris drops some of that beef jerky?

All this sounds pretty quiet and peaceful, right? Well we did have some excitement along the way besides middle of the night bathroom breaks. It was supposed to rain that weekend. Ha! Where we live if they say it's supposed to rain, it usually doesn't. But, we were in the mountains, so we were prepared with an extra tarp, towels, and blankets. We'd never been rained on while camping. And I wasn't interested in getting rained on.

Friday night ~ no rain.

It started raining Saturday. Off and on. Once a little bit hard. We even took a nap in the rain which was nice. After the rain we inspected the tent and only a tiny amount of leaking in a corner or two, so we mopped it up and left the towels to soak up any more potential water.

Saturday night in the middle of the night the heavens opened up wide! At first it was a spectacular show of thunder and lightening with the rain. The rain got harder and harder. It was so loud in that tent that we had to shout at each other to be heard. Greg was a foot away from Stephanie's face and shouting to be heard.

It was pretty exciting. It was a little bit scary.

And then.

It started hailing.

It got louder. It got a whole lot scarier.

Greg and I hurriedly got fully dressed because we thought we all might have to make a run for the camper. Things finally calmed down and we realized we wouldn't have to make a run for it after all. When we peeked out of the tent, the ground was covered in white.

The next day we found that the tent leaked quite a bit more than our middle of the night assessment. We were super glad for the tarp that was draped across the top.

We had a hot mess of wet stuff on our hands!

I informed Greg that it was fun and all, but no more rainy camping.