Camping at Grandma's House

On Friday, while Perry was working from home, I asked if we could set the tent up in the backyard for the boys to sleep in that night. We hadn't been camping yet this year, and I thought this would be fun for them. He responded with a, "why don't we just go somewhere to camp?" After a busy few weeks, I thought this would be the last thing he wanted to do. We hadn't discussed where we'd camp, but agreed to go somewhere. At dinner with Grandma that evening, she told us how she was planning on going to Whitefish to unload a grill for the house, without any help, so we volunteered to meet her there to help, and then go camping after. 

We scrambled around Friday evening and Saturday morning to get everything packed up. It *barely* fit! After a long drive to Whitefish with a lot of traffic, we met up with Grandma and had lunch at MacKenzie River Pizza before we went out to the house. Although the house had a ton of mosquitoes, the kids enjoyed running around for a few minutes. Charlotte enjoyed running/scooting/rolling down the hill off the deck. SO cute to watch! I would say she's walking 50% of the time now!

Before we left Whitefish, we stopped at Whitefish Lake to meet up with a mutual friend of mine and Perry. Unfortunately they were out on a paddle boat when we arrived which caused us to miss out on seeing them. (I'm hoping to take the kids back up there this week to see them again though!) We finally made it out of Whitefish around 4:00 and planned on camping somewhere in the Swan Lake area, about  2 hours away...and once we started exploring the area, we found every spot was taken. At that point we decide to just camp out at Placid Lake outside of Seeley...when we arrived there, we discovered every spot was taken there too.... So we camped in Grandma's backyard by the river. Basically we spent a total of about 6 hours in the car thorough the entire day, and ended up camping 50 miles from home...

 Camping at Grandma's had a couple big perks though! For one, we were able to use the tractor to haul everything back and forth. For two, it had a bathroom. Enough said. 

Before Perry and I could even get our stuff down by the fire pit, the boys were already playing in the river. Hunter was crawdad hunting and thought he found one. 

 Charlotte was a trooper the entire trip. She hardly fussed at all. She napped for a total of maybe 2 hours throughout the day. And missed out on her morning and afternoon snack. 

 The boys were awesome too! They also missed out on an afternoon snack and kept their attitudes in check throughout the day even though dinner didn't happen until close to 8:00p. 

 After a little arguing, we finally had the tent set up. Perry hates reading the directions...

 Once the boys finished eating, I told them I had a surprise for them - Glow-in-the-dark bubbles. Except they either didn't work, or it wasn't dark enough. I bought glow sticks and dump the insides into the bubbles, and the container was glowing, but the bubbles didn't. 

 Luckily I brought other glow sticks to play with. 

 Like these glasses. Hard to keep on, but fun in the dark!

 Charlotte had her fun with the glow-in-the-dark stuff too!

 JP probably had the most fun though!

 We all crawled into bed around 10:30 and despite the few rocks we were laying on, we all fell asleep fairly quickly. Charlotte woke up around 1:15 and cried for a while. She was probably out of sorts being outside in the dark. After about fifteen minutes of bawling, she finally calmed down, and slept with me. She did the air sucking thing that people do after they stop crying for about half an hour. Does that have a name? 

Just as she was sound asleep, it started sprinkling...Before I knew it, we were in the middle of a down pour with flash lighting and LOUD thunder. It woke Perry up (which is hard to do) and even though two of us were talking in our normal voices, it was still hard to hear each other. Charlotte and Hunter slept through it all. JP woke up at the end of the thunderstorm. He came over to me and told me he was scared, and asked to snuggled with me. Before I could even get a word out, he was snuggled up on my pillow, asleep. Once Perry and I were done laughing about it, I woke him back up to go get his sleeping bag and bring it over next to me. After he was laying there for a while, I asked him how he was doing. "Not good mom!" He then scooted to the bottom of his sleeping bag and plugged his ears for a while... I was just glad JP and Hunter didn't wake up during the storm and need to go to the bathroom! Perry left the tent for a while so he could watch the storm, and there was no way I was about to leave the tent, let alone my sleeping bag!

 I did get to wake up to this cutie though! Actually, it was the sounds of her and Hunter giggling, as he had crawled into the pack-n-play to play with her before we everyone else woke up. 

By the time we left the cabin, we had a lot of tire people! And I'm the only one who hasn't napped yet! Not fair!