I have never camped in a tent. As a youth, I worked as a counselor at a summer camp, but always had cabins. I didn't realize how much more effort it would take to tent camp, but we had a fun time. The first day, we had fun setting up camp with help from our friends, the Johnsons. We had a campfire and smores, too. The kids went to bed, Jeff and I waited out the fire then joined them.
About 4:30 am, Pander woke up sick. He gets sick all the time when we are away from home, and he announced, "I think I am just homesick!" Poor guy was up most of the night, and so was Jeff. At 6:30, Jeff ran to the laundry mat to take care of the things that he got sick on, and I got up and got the kids ready for the morning. The sickness passed, so we were able to enjoy the beautiful weather and take a hike. We saw so many cool things- about a thousand ants helping decompose a tree stump, a natural sink hole in the forest, a huge tree with 3 connected stumps that Aleks loved standing in, and a beautiful overlook of the lake.
After our hike, we drove to the airport to pick up Uncle Ben, Jeff's best friend who flew in to hang out with us. We were so glad to be able to spend time with Ben, Zak, Katie and the kids, since we only see them once a year, sometimes less, and it was great to reconnect. We had dinner at Zak and Katie's place, and stayed until dark. Then we headed back and had another campfire with cookies baked over the fire. Noodle was so tired he asked to go to bed instead of staying up for dessert! In fact, everyone but Moo fell asleep before the cookies were done. Moo has serious FOMO (fear of missing out), so that isn't a huge surprise!
At about 3 am, it started to storm. Thunder, wind, lightening, the whole kit and caboodle. The kids slept through it, and the tent stayed dry, thankfully. But the next morning everything was soaked. We couldn't cook, we had nowhere to sit down, it was just miserable. So we made the most of it, went to breakfast at Perkins, walked around Walmart, and then went back to the campsite when things were at least dry enough to hang out at the site.
In the evening we went to the Johnson's again and had pizza. The kids loved hanging out with G and K, and Fia told me that "K is such a tough girl, I really like her!"even though at one point Fia nd K were playing and somehow K let go of a pine branch and it flew back and hit Fia in the face. Fia was ok, but had a pretty nasty looking set of pine needle scratches on her face for a bit.
After a long few days camping, we spent an afternoon at the park in Bemidji and took pictures by the statues of Babe the Blue Ox and Paul Bunyan (or Bald Onion, as Pander calls him!)
Here we are at Lake Bemidji, above to the right, the kids are learning to skip stones, and to the left Noodle is standing below "Bald Onion", realizing just how far he has left to go before he can reach his greatest goal of being a giant!
We also went to see the gazebo in the park where Jeff proposed to me over 9 years ago. It was nice to remember and share that memory with the crazies.
On Friday, we left town a bit earlier than planned, because Fia woke up with a high fever and allergy issues. We headed to my in-laws house to visit for a few days. It is always nice to visit with family and the kids had a fun with grandpa and grandma. All in all, we had a great trip, learned alot more about what we will need for future camping trips, and made great memories!
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