Happy Campers

For my husband and I, camping trips have usually been a time of peace, privacy, and renewal. Yet this last trip made us realize that may have just been a short-lived phase. Quiet bonding time is now swapped with slightly chaotic family time. We were pretty confident of our teamwork abilities and had gotten camping with a baby/toddler down to a science, but where did that little baby go?

Growing up, I never camped. I actually thought camping was more of an American legend that hardly existed anymore (kind of like cowboys lol). But my husband opened my eyes to very real existence of camping, and believe it or not I enjoyed it. But notice the past tense there because this last trip left us realizing things may be a changing. We should actually still be there as I'm writing this, but we are on the couch with the TV on instead. That mostly has to do with the cold rain forecast for tonight, but these issues didn't help our cause:

 
• Our site was a good quarter-mile away from the nearest bathroom... keep in mind we have a newly potty trained girl and a 6-month prego in the group! 
• The site was laid over a rock foundation which Doug had to put tiny spikes into for the tent... let's just say there was a variety of mumbling profanities filling the forest for a while.
• The temp got down under 40 degrees at night and my husband (who likes to sleep in as little as possible and didn't let this trip stop him) was curled around my big belly (in the fetal position himself)  clinging to me for survival the entire night.
• Our morning breakfast made on a propane, tabletop stove consisted of "pancakes tar tar".
• The wood we bought (which was enough for the 3 day trip we planned) was wet, enough to be growing moss! Needless to say, we had more of a lovely smoke cloud than a cozy fire.
• Romantic, peaceful time for mommy and daddy did not exist anymore because staying put and napping in a tent without a caged-in bed was practically laughable for our not-so-little girl now. 
• And to top it off just perfectly... right as the car was almost packed and we calmly decided to leave a little early to beat the rain, I was forced to wash my hands and realized I left my wedding rings in a tiny, mesh pocket in the now completely broken-down, put away, and packed up tent. My options were to tell my hubby to unpack the tent again and just accept the freak out that would come of it or go a month or two pretending I'm single.. guess which one my husband picked for me. Haha

Honestly, it was a little discouraging that our perfected trips filled with quiet love, teamwork, and relaxation might be suspended for awhile. But I reminded myself and my hubby that we could have those days back eventually, we just gotta wait twenty some odd years. <3