Camping- Yes we tried it again...

We tried camping again because my little sister Lindsey wanted to go. We went the Wednesday before Thanksgiving because the weather was cool, but not too cool. There are a lot of pluses to camping when people want to get together and stay up late playing games and talking. We hadn't seen Lindsey for 18 months, so there was a lot to catch up on. We have a hard time putting the kids to bed at someone else's house, so our days of staying up late and playing games as a family have dwindled. The down side to camping is that tents don't contain noise very well, so when certain members of our family wake up in the middle of the night your worry is to contain the noise so that no one else in the camp site wakes up even though everyone in your tent is nice and awake together.

I'm not sure why we keep trying camping. Dallin pulled his "I don't want to sleep in a tent but want to sleep in my car bed" stunt at midnight like he did last time. Luckily, we were able to get him back to sleep without driving around town since we were definitely far back into the forest, but he still was up for an hour and a half. Gavin pulled his 5 a.m. wake up and refused to go back to sleep. Instead he giggled loudly enough that Dallin woke up too. We enjoyed an early hike that morning so that others in the camp could keep sleeping. I think camping is just not for us until the kids are a little older. Dallin loves it and asks to go every day, but his midnight wake up/ I'm all done with tents just isn't cool.

Besides the sleeping issues, we had a great time. Here are some of the highlights.

Cousin Sam entertaining the babies while we set up tents- She is going to be a great babysitter!

The three babies hanging out- Carter 8 months, Gavin 5 months, and Alex 3 1/2 months

Checking out the bugs

Playing with Aunt Lindsey

Wrestling on the air mattress with Uncle Jared- Yes we sleep on air mattresses and Dallin still begs for his car bed

Playing No Bears Are Out Tonight except this is Thursday morning. We had a rousing game of it Wednesday night in the dark. Here is how you play: Someone hides in the woods as a bear. Everyone sings, "No bears are out tonight. Grandpa got rid of them all last night." Then you run through the woods looking for the bear and the bear comes out to chase you. All this is done without flashlights. The boys loved it. We thought they would be scared, but they are tough.
In this picture Drew is the bear chasing Grandpa and Dallin.

Running free

Playing on a tree that had just toppled over. It was kind of scary because the kids had been playing over there earlier and then later, all of sudden it fell down. We were lucky that no one was over there when it happened.

We did get a rousing game of Bang! in and enjoyed talking together, so besides the lack of sleep, we had a great time!