Building A Life: 2015

We made our first attempt at a family camping trip this past weekend and I'm happy to say it was a success. We made some mistakes and learned some lessons and per our usual luck with weather picked the coldest two nights we've had yet (the night temperatures leading up to the weekend were in the 50's and the night temperatures following the weekend have been in the 40's and 50's -- the night temperatures when we were there were in the low 30's and even the upper 20's; we did not stay the second night...). This trip was in lieu of a birthday party for Millie and she loved every minute. In fact the kids could not have been better. There were several times when meltdowns would not have been unexpected, but they didn't come. Merrill had a brief whiny moment when we learned that we weren't going to be able to explore any caves, but she pulled out of it pretty quickly. Some observations from our trip:

I picked a state park to camp in because of all the great outdoor opportunities (caves, hiking trails, the Meramec river) over something like a KOA or a JellyStone. I wasn't really interested in gimicky/cheesy campground activities. Scott and I were both expecting a relatively wooded somewhat private campsite, which is what we have experienced before. What we got was three roads lined with trailers and tents in a concentrated spot all decorated with elaborate Halloween decorations. Not only were the campsites not private, it was "Spooktackular" weekend at this particular campground. Ooops. It all worked out fine as we adjusted our mindset and just rolled with things and ultimately we were able to get in some nature as well as participate in some of the campground activities set up for the weekend.

The view up the road from our campsite:
We were fortunate that we were at the bend in the road so there was actually quite a bit of space between us and the campsites on either side of us. We were also lucky that we got nice "neighbors"

We had one bundle of wood at home and brought that with us with a plan to buy more Saturday as needed. One bundle of wood doesn't go very far with temperatures in the 30's... We only had a few logs to get us through the morning and by the time we headed to the shower house to brush our teeth our fire was pretty much out. As we were walking back to our site we noticed that we had a really big fire burning! We were all a little confused about how that could be and when we got to the site we saw a nice big fire built with fresh wood. Our nice neighbors had heard us commenting that we were out of wood and built the fire up for us while we were gone. The girls were very impressed and this is one of their favorite stories to tell about the weekend.
One reason I picked this park is that it has several caves in it and I thought the kids would enjoy exploring them. Unfortunately, the biggest cave (in which they give tours) had closed for the season 2 days before we got there and the smaller caves were all closed due to a disease being carried in by people and transmitted to bats
We made a rookie mistake and left a container with food out overnight on the picnic table. It did have a sealed lid, but not tight enough to keep in the smell of the food. During the night a critter came by and knocked the container to the ground. To our credit, the lid stayed on, but a chunk of plastic broke off the top allowing the critter to get into some things. The same critter also clawed at the bottom of our garbage bag which we had hanging on a hook. I don't think he got much out of either but it was still annoying (and freaked me out a bit when I heard the noise in the middle of the night!)
Did I mention it was cold? I'm pretty sure I didn't sleep at all Friday night between the noise of the campsite, the cold, worrying about whether or not the girls were warm enough, and trying to get comfortable with Teddy in my sleeping bag.
The kids campaigned really hard to stay our second night Saturday night, and they almost convinced me. The tent was nice and cozy warm after sitting closed up in the sun all day, and we'd been having so much fun. But the reality was it was going to be an even colder night, we were out of firewood again, and the thought of my own, warm bed was just too appealing. We just weren't equipped for those low temperatures! (and we weren't the only tent campers who bailed that night!)
I was completely unaware of the "Spooktackular" event. It did not come up in any of my on-line research or anywhere on the park's website that I saw. It felt like we were crashing a party. It was particularly awkward Saturday night when they had trick-or-treating since our kids didn't have costumes to put on and we didn't have candy to pass out. We were packing up and just hanging out by the fire during trick-or-treating and most people rightly assumed we weren't participating. But a few kids did walk up and ask and a few parents gave us some snide looks and under-their-breath comments. Ah well.
Saturday during the day we explored the visitor center which had a nice learning exhibit in it and took a 1.25 mile hike. The kids did amazingly well on the hike (once Merrill got over the fact that we didn't get to go into any caves). Teddy got a shoulder ride for the last little bit of the hike, but other than that, they all walked on their own and had lots of fun climbing and exploring.
Millie started the hike wearing four shirts, two pairs of pants, a scarf, an ear muff, gloves, and so many pairs of socks that her shoes barely fit (we were REALLY chilled from our cold night of sleeping). She shed about half of the layers mid-way through the hike.
We did come across 3 caves on our hike and at least got to peek in -- and there was one overhang that the kids could climb into that we counted as a cave :).
We had the option to drive to another park to visit a large cave that was still open and giving tours, but the kids had already been told that there was a scavenger hunt back at the campground and wanted to participate in that. We didn't have time to make the 25-mile drive to tour the cave and get back for the scavenger hunt. Caving is definitely on our list for next time though (yes, we're already talking about next time)
We think it would be great to have another family go along with us for a next camping trip ... I'm not so sure any of our friends will agree though! Gotta find some camping families to be friends with!
Merrill has been talking about making Millie an apple pie for her birthday for months now. So we made up a filling at home and brought it with us, bought a pre-made pie crust, and made apple pie in our pie irons to celebrate Millie's birthday. Millie was very surprised and happy and Merrill was very proud.
While I hadn't really been interested in a campground with pre-planned activities it worked out well as we got to do some nature stuff and some park stuff. The girls and Scott had fun going around the park finding and taking pictures of things on the scavenger list while Teddy and I stayed behind to do dishes and attempt a nap (if you know Scott and me, you know that I got the better deal in that scenario -- not that Teddy actually took a nap, or let me take one...)

Some (too many) pictures of our weekend. Lucky for us the girls had Monday and Tuesday off of school so Scott took those days off and we enjoyed an extra long weekend with plenty of time for fun once we got back from camping. I can't say the perfect moods lasted the whole time, but that's just part of life with kids. Someone is bound to be over-tired, hungry, bored, etc. at some point in time!

Did I mention we over-packed?

the kids might have gone camping JUST to get s'mores...

my sleeping buddy -- yes we slept in our winter hats

trying to get warm the next morning

our home for the weekend -- thanks to friends!

plain hiking is booooring...

ready to take on 8

trail mix makes everything better

so does a 'cave'

being presented with her birthday pie surprise

watching the trick-or-treaters and drinking hot chocolate

with the birthday girl

Our local park had a temporary 9-11 memorial installed for the 14th anniversary. Flags were placed around the lake for each of the first responders who died that day. I remember parts of that day so clearly, and others have been blurred from my memory. There is no arguing though that it was a pivotal day in our history and the biggest historical moment of my generation. It's not something I've ever talked to the kids about, but having the memorial in town seemed like a good opportunity to teach them about this very sad point in our history. They listened and had lots of questions and did their best to comprehend what I was saying. Merrill wasn't so sure she wanted to go to the memorial, but in the end they all decided to go with me. The girls were very interested in looking at the pictures and reading the names on each flag. It was a very moving sight. To make the night even more memorable, Millie was asked to "play" taps by a man who was involved with the installment. We are living in such a tumultuous time (perhaps all times are tumultuous and we can only know the true weight of them as adults?), but we are so unbelievably lucky that the war zone that was 9-11 is not a daily life experience for us. I suppose it's not luck at all -- it's thanks to the brave men and women who give their all to protect us.