Our First FAMILY Campout

Last weekend we experienced another FIRST for the Appling clan. We were invited to go camping with friends and in an effort to include the kids and do it on a budget - the decision was made to just keep it simple and camp in the Carr's backyard. Now if we had done this in our backyard, this would seem quite silly since we would basically be sleeping on bermuda grass with no big trees or leaves to be found. BUT, Jon & Bonnie, on the other hand, managed to create an entire campsite in their backyard.

The campsite included two large tents, a real fire pit, and even trees to nestle the tents into. Their backyard is a wide, long rectangular shape so where the campsite was carved out, you could not even see the house. This was really key in making our campout seem "real." We did all of the typical camping activities - made hobo dinners (silver turtles as Bonnie calls them), s'mores, used flashlights, slept in sleeping bags and stayed up late chatting in camp chairs. Although, I will mark this as the first Appling family campout, Andrew might have to do a redo for his memory book -- he and Emily cheated and slept in the house in the comfort of a crib and pack n' play. The girls sacked out around 9pm and the adults held out until midnight.

We all had a great time and awoke around 7:30 the next morning, but instead of coffee brewing over the fire, we decided to do breakfast on the stove...so yes, we did cheat a little bit! It just made for easier clean-up (at least that is how Jon put it).

One funny story from the night: Caroline did not go to the bathroom before going to bed and I told Bonnie that she may wake up in the night and need to go (the girls slept in their tent - another nice treat for us). Around 3:30 am Caroline woke up and said, "I need to go tee-tee!" Bonnie called out, "Bar-ba-ra!" I am such a sound sleeper that I didn't hear a thing...but Ben jumped up to help out and when he did, Caroline and Bonnie were already headed toward the house. We all laughed about this since I had predicted this would happen, yet I slept through it all.