Our First Camping Trip

We had to make sure we went camping at least ONCE this summer, you know, in true Toftdahl/Southworth fashion, .... Ha ha ha! NOT!!! My family SOOOOO did not do camping. A direct quote from my dad: "Why would I want to pretend to be homeless?" And he says it completely with a straight face. He is not joking. Despite the total lack of camping experiences growing up, my sisters and I still found a love for camping because of the 5 days we got of it every year for Girls Camp.

Sean and I decided we would give family camping a shot and got our feet wet with a one-nighter at a campground about 25 minutes outside of town. Of course, we were there less than 24 hours, but I still had to document the whole experience with pictures!

Our home for the night and the beautiful trees surrounding our campsite. I have to have trees when camping - for the beauty of being surrounded by nature, the protection from the elements and the extra privacy between campsites.

After setting up camp, we went down to the lake and met up with the Colemans to go swimming. It was so hot that day, it was nice to cool off. Plus the lake and shore were beautiful!

Mikey found a frog! There was quite the excitement with this discovery and he hung onto this little guy [in the water] for most of the time. His mom wouldn't let him take it home though. I don't blame her!

Ethan had fun throwing rocks. I love his gray-blue eyes in that middle picture.

This was the only picture I could get of all the kiddos!

Had to get a picture of the ducks..... GO DUCKS!!

That night we had a campfire - thanks to Sean, because I hate building campfires! I always made my girls at camp do it as "part of their certification"! - and roasted marshmallows for s'mores.

Ethan was in and out of the tent for a while - he couldn't decide if he wanted to lay down or sit with us by the fire. Finally, Sean convinced him to come sit with us and taught him the tradition of singing around the campfire. Ethan chose the same 3 bedtime songs he always picks: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star; I am a Child of God and "the Angel Song" which is the one that Sean always sings to him. I got this video of the two of them singing together.

I slept terrible that night, which I'm guessing is largely to do with the fact that I slept on the crappy air mattress and it was completely deflated by morning. So I got up early, went to the bathroom and read outside for a while. It was still pretty early, but I was getting cold, so I went back to the tent to get my sleeping bag (which I had to pull over Sean to get it out) and forgot that I had tucked the flashlight into it. Yeah, guess what fell out as I tried to pull my sleeping bag out... onto Sean's head! Ohhhh, I felt so bad!! Especially because it was our MAG flashlight and those things are heavy! All was forgiven... I think!

Anyway, once everyone was up, we had pancakes and sausage for breakfast and then went ahead and started packing up.

Well, Sean and I packed up... Ethan just sorta wandered around our campsite.

In the bottom left picture you can see Ethan playing with some cars I brought for him after he very specifically told me not to bring them for him because he would not be playing with them!

We did find this pretty cool hollowed out tree, though.

And that's pretty much it! We're hoping to go maybe one more time before the cold weather and rain sets in - maybe even a 2-nighter!