We Survived!!!

We survived Spring Break '09 Sea World/Camping Trip with our kids ages 6,3, and 1!! I can honestly say it was fun! I would not quite go to the level of calling myself a camping enthusiast but I would consider another trip!

Thank you for all your supportive comments after my post here announcing our trip. I loved reading them all! Whenever you leave a comment, please know that it really encourages me to keep writing!

So here is a random download from our trip. I'm going to write it fast because I am in the midst of a laundry and unpacking marathon combined with the reality of real life facing me tomorrow after a week off from kid activities and school. And these next 2 weeks are going to be BUSY. I can barely stand to look at my calendar! That was a long-winded way of saying that if this post is rambling, grammatically incorrect, or fails to entertain, please forgive me!

Highlights of the trip:

• helping my 1 year old pet a dolphin for the first time and hearing him call Shamu, "Moo whale!"

• riding with my 3 year old daughter on her first real roller-coaster ride! She was too short when we went last summer and was so excited to be able to ride this year. She is a daredevil when it comes to physical feats like climbing high and going fast. As the ride ended, I asked "what did you think?" She said, "that was fast!" with the biggest smile on her face. She totally loved it and proceeded to point out all the bigger roller coasters in the park that she can't wait to be tall enough to ride!
• The Guadalupe River State Park where we camped was beautiful!

• The river was low due to not much rain and we could actually walk across it at this point - very cool!

• The weather was great - upper 70s during the day and 50s at night.
• The bath house with hot showers and flushing toliets!
  
• Eating real smores with the kids!
• Shopping at the outlet mall and the awesome bargains!
• Finding a new camp stove at the Coleman Outlet to replace ours that stopped working.
  
• A hot breakfast of pancakes, bacon, eggs & coffee cooked on our new, working campstove the second morning!
• My husband and I worked great together as a team setting up and taking down the tent!
• Somehow we managed to fit all the gear in our SUV!
  

Lowpoints:

• Setting up our camp in the dark because we arrived late after the day at Sea World.
  
• After we finally got everything set up it was way past the kids bedtime and I thought they'd go right to sleep after such a busy day but, they were wild for a while and took what felt like forever to settle down. In all fairness, this was also the first time our 1 year-old had been put to bed outside of his crib, so expecting him to just go right to sleep in a sleeping bag was probably a little unrealistic, but that is the opptumistic, fantasy world I live in!
• The racoons attacking our campsite at night. My husband claims that the racoons were not that close, they just sounded close, but make no mistake, my Internet Friends, they were RIGHT OUTSIDE our tent rummaging through the stuff we'd left out there like the plastic storage tub of food! I just knew they'd be able to get inside the tub and take off with our food and layed awake for hours worring about them!
• Midway through the night the first night our toddler woke up and couldn't go back to sleep for a while. He ended up sharing my sleeping bag and although he's cuddly it did not make for the best sleeping conditions! The second night he went to sleep great, but was woken up at 4AM when Big Brother had to go potty. Toddler didn't go back to sleep until Daddy finally took him to the car to watch a movie on the car DVD player!
  
• The first morning our camp stove didn't work. This morning following a very sleepless night included no coffee and no hot breakfast. There was a brief period of time that my attitude was not great, and the camping was almost aborted!

The highs definitely outdo the lows, and I am thankful for a fun, safe trip that we will always remember! Stay tuned throughout the week, as I'll have a few more camping-related posts, including lessons learned about what to pack, etc.!