A few weeks ago, our friends came over to visit while they were in town. I mentioned that we were going over to my cousin's wedding and we would be sort of close to where they lived. We briefly mentioned camping, laughed, and moved on. Later on we decided, sure, why not!?
There were a few warning signs that we ignored that maybe we shouldn't have:
- We have 5 young kids between the 2 families
- The weather forecast said thunderstorms and flash floods
- The lady at Starbucks that looked at us like we were a little nuts for taking a 7 week and 2 year old camping
But, we love camping and decided we were up for an adventure. We managed to barely fit all of our stuff in our car for one night of camping. We had lent out our tent and were going to pick it up the morning we left and shove it in the car. We found out that the tent wasn't left out for us so we could either break into my sister's house to get it or wander through my brother's garage and take theirs. We decided against climbing through a kitchen window and decided on using a garage code. I sent Danny over to my brother's to get the tent while I finished getting ready.
We left at 8:00 am with the plan of getting to the campsite, setting up, going to the wedding, then coming back to the campsite for the night.
The boys did okay on the trip over, we had to stop several times to let Cohen out of his carseat and to feed Ezra. At our first stop we realized that Ezra had barfed all over in his carseat and outfit. We cleaned him up, fed Cohen a snack, and continued on. At our second stop, Ezra required another outfit change for blowing out his diaper. He was very quickly using up all the clothes we had brought.
{First camping trip for these 2!}
After about 4 hours in and out of the car, we made it to Eastern Washington to our campsite. We were told the campsite was first come first serve so we were really hoping we would find a spot. There was two sites open so we quickly snagged one. Our friends met us there shortly after and we started to set up camp. We were optimistic since the weather seemed to be nice. All the boys were in heaven with the space to roam and lots of dirt and sticks to play with. Ezra was on his best behavior and was actually
sleeping.
{We were frequently counting kids to make sure we still had them all!}
We took a quick walk after camp was set up. We had high hopes to see the lake, but it was too far away for all the little legs and we had to get ready for the wedding. We went back to the campsite, tried to wipe the dirt off and put on our wedding clothes.
Did I mention Cohen hadn't napped all day? We got to the wedding and found some seats. We quickly realized there was not going to be any sitting for Cohen who was in his
don't stop moving or I'll fall asleep mode. Ezra was amazingly still sleeping.
{Mr. Chubs sleeping, so not normal}
Danny spent the ceremony chasing Cohen around outside and trying to keep him busy. Cohen continued to run/fall/be a disaster and it was clear we weren't going to be able to stay very long. Thankfully, my mom and dad were also at the wedding and were able to help us try to keep him under control. I shoved down some lunch, tried to feed Cohen which was totally not happening. I got a few bites in before I just had to give up and take Cohen outside to run (fall). Ezra also decided to wake up and be hungry. Then he decided he really wasn't that hungry, he just wanted to play. I went to change his diaper, which was another blow out and I had to change his outfit. Shortly after the ceremony it started to absolutely POUR down rain. Thankfully it moved over fairly quickly so we figured it would have been the same at the campground. After we inhaled our food, we decided it was time to go before Cohen and/or Ezra completely lost it.
{Beautiful bride}
As we drove back towards the campsite, we noticed there were huge dark clouds ahead of us. We continued to be optimistic and hoped it would just keep on moving. A few minutes later we got a text from our friends saying it had been pouring rain since we left. They had managed to get everything under cover somewhere and they were hiding in their tent waiting for it to pass. It was sunny literally everywhere else except where we were headed. About halfway there, we hit a roadblock where police were redirecting traffic. All I could do was laugh. We didn't know where we were or if there was another way to get to the campsite. Both of our phones were dead or very close to dying. I had these thoughts of all of our stuff at the campsite with no way to get there and no way to tell our friends we couldn't get through. After driving past the roadblock again we were able to get directions to go around.
We kept getting texts about the situation at the campground...still raining...then hailing...the tent filling with water because it was slightly downhill...
We made it back to the campground and decided to leave the boys in the car until we figured out what we were going to do. We found our friends in their tent with their 3 boys, the bottom of their tent, mats, and sleeping bags completely wet. We started to hear thunder and decided to call it quits. If we left right then we could both get home at a semi-decent hour.
We moved our friends over to our dry tent and sent the men out to quickly gather everything, take down the tents, and stuff it into the car. We sat in the tent listening to the rain while our 5 boys played/wrestled/hugged/cried and ran around.
When everything was in the car we headed out. As we drove away we could see lightning all around. We had been hoping to see a meteor shower, but that was out of the question with the storm. We got home a little after midnight, put the boys in bed, left everything in the car, and fell in bed ourselves. The longest one day camping trip ever! This will be one of those things we look back on someday and makes for a good story. The crazy thing is...we're thinking of trying to go camping again before summer is over!!
It wasn't a total loss though, we got to see my cousin get married, visit briefly with our friends, make about 7 loads of laundry, and inherited a Wubbanub for Ezra.
