Roughing It

     I have a tendency to get fixated on accomplishing something I set out to do, and by golly, I'm going to do it even if everything seems to be going to pieces.  Eventually I'll stop long enough to think, "What in the world am I doing?"  Which was what was going through my mind as I was driving down the highway this Friday; car loaded with camping gear and kids, and no husband.
      The plan started out simply enough.  I wanted to go camping with my brother and his family, but the weekend we were planning on going was suppose to be rainy, so we had to push it back a couple of weeks.  Then my brother suggests we camp in the woods on my parents property.  Dave didn't like the idea of hauling camping gear up a mountain, but David (my brother) assured him that he could get his truck pretty near the sight.  I had my doubts if this could be done, but I thought that between Dave and I, it wouldn't be too much work to get our stuff up there.  It might be a little hitch in my planning, but still worth the trip.
     Then I see that it's going to get pretty cold that night.  I don't love camping when it's freezing out, but since the weather is only going to get colder, I just planned on packing warm PJs.  Then Dave has to work, and can't come with us.  At this point it would make since to cancel the camping, and just stay at my parents, but the kids were looking forward to camping, and so camping we were going.  I pared all our camping paraphernalia down to the essentials, and loaded up.  Dave had already left for work, and I was rushing to get everything together and packed up, so I was well into my two hour trip, when I realized I had forgotten our coats and the twins she-shes (special blankets).  Abriel is convinced that she can not live without her she-she.  I don't think she has ever spent a night without it, and here we were, getting ready to sleep out in the woods with no she-she.  This is when I thought, "What am I doing?" 
      Despite the bumps along the way, I did get there safely, (Considering my driving is less than exemplary, that is something in it's self.)  hauling everything up to the camp site wasn't a big deal, and it didn't get near as cold as it was suppose to, so we didn't even need our coats.  And Abriel, though not happy about it, managed to go to sleep with out her she-she.

        Here she is getting ready to go to sleep in our cozy little tent.

Samuel was all about helping David get a fire going in the morning.  David showed him how to break sticks over your knee, and so he broke every little twig that went into the fire, over his knee.

     David has strung up swings on a big beech that's on the edge of the woods.  The kids loved swinging on them.  They can be quite thrilling.  Unfortunately, I whacked my heel on a root while swinging.  It hurt so bad, I thought I might have done some permanent damage, but thankfully it feels much better now. 

So I guess my persistence, or perhaps stubbornness, payed off, as we all had a really fun time.  Camping out in the woods is quite a bit different than camping at a campground.  Every time during the night when Rumpole (the big dog in the pictures) would start barking and growling, I'd start thinking about bobcats and bears, and all the other big scary animals he might be barking at.  At some point I realized that even if there was something out there, there wasn't a thing I could do about it, so the best thing to do was just go to sleep.