Camping in October

Have you ever had a super, big blond moment? I've had multiples in my life, but I had a great a couple of weekends ago. Where we live, October is a great month to go camping. Dallin went camping on the Father's and Son's camp out a few months ago, and since then has talked of nothing else. We kept telling him all through September that we would take him camping when it got cooler. He kept thinking that meant the next day. We finally set a date, booked a campsite, invited my parents along and got ready to go. It was 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon, the car was packed like we were going on a week long vacation instead of just over night, and Dallin was bouncing off the wall trying to but not succeeding in containing his excitement (Gavin was probably in his car seat watching his brother jump.) At the last minute, I went into the computer room to print off the reservation confirmation and see the date, October 26th and 27th. My heart starts going crazy as I ran to the calendar. It was Friday the 22nd not the 26th. I ran to the calender in the kitchen just to make sure and see the problem. The kitchen calender was already on November due to the fact that I booked a babysitter for Stake Conference three weeks in advance and wrote it on my calendar. I was so proud of myself too for being so on top of getting a baby sitter. You can imagine the embarrassment as I told Zane and called my dad. After about an half hour on the phone though, we found another campground at the KOA and off we went.

We did the normal camping things like cooking tin foil dinners, roasting marshmallows (Dallin's favorite), "hiking" in the morning (more like a nature walk), and swimming in the heated pool, shuffle board, and playing on the playground (hey, we were at a KOA!) We had a great time.

The "dinosaur footprint" we found on our hike.

Besides the blond moment, the real "highlight" of the trip was trying to sleep with Dallin. He went to sleep without any problems at 9:30, but he woke up around midnight. There was a karaoke party up the road from us that was extremely loud until about 1 a.m. Dallin lay in bed saying over and over again, "noisy." It was also very light outside with the full moon. Dallin kept asking for pancakes thinking it was morning. We were so desperate to get Dallin to sleep and not to wake my parents and Gavin, that Zane put him in the car and drove him around town until he fell asleep. This worked great except he didn't transfer into the tent well. After awhile, I got up and drove him around town. By now, Dallin was wired and asking for his car bed. I finally just parked the car, leaned my seat back and resigned myself to sleeping in the car. Dallin was buckled into his car seat and at least this way his talking wouldn't wake my parents or Gavin. When Dallin realized the plan, he decided to choose to go to sleep in his sleeping bag in my parents' tent. It was 2 a.m. When he woke in the morning, Zane was kind to take him to the playground so the rest of us could still sleep (there are benefits to camping with a playground!) Now when Dallin asks to go camping constantly, we just remind him of the driving around town at 1 a.m. I'm not willing to do that again anytime soon. We might be camping in our backyard for awhile first.

Gavin slept great, but still woke up at 4 a.m. for a feeding. It was a pretty miserable night sleep so when we got home from camping, the whole family took a nap for a long time. Besides the night time, we had a great time.