First Camping Trip!

This past weekend we went on our first camping trip as a family.  My parents were planning on coming too, but sadly at the last minute my dad found that he had a whole bunch of work to do, with deadlines looming, and decided it was infeasible for him to come.  He was missed. Mama still came!

We went to beautiful Enchanted Rock.  I remember that as a kid my favorite part of camping was hanging out at our campsite- sitting around the fire, toasting marshmallows, trying to turn our tent into a cozy home-away-from-home by filling it with all the stuffed animals my sister and I were able to cram into our duffel bags.  I think that our tot enjoyed these same aspects of camping.

But he was also a great trooper when it came to hiking on the rocks! In fact, we could hardly keep him at the site- he kept wanting to go climb up the rock face that was right nearby.
We didn't sleep so well on Friday night. Our plan was for him to share a sleeping bag with Justin, which kind of worked for several hours.  Little guy slept on and off, interspersed with wiggling, trying to climb out of the bag, and saying "Mama! Dad! Mama! Mama!" Around 3 am I offered to take him in my sleeping bag for a while, thinking, "hey, I'm not really sleeping anyway."  So he spent the next hour or two not sleeping next to me. He finally dozed off around 4, by which time I had to go to the bathroom and was in a rather uncomfortable position, but dared not move for fear of waking the tot.  So we were all pretty tired on Saturday for our big hike, though we adults were able to handle a little bit better than Zeki.  But he didn't his tiredness ruin the hike. He almost dozed off while riding on his daddy's back.
                                                
He enjoyed our snack break. I think out-of-the-ordinary foods are one of the most fun things for kids on any vacation.

 When we reached the top of the big rock, Zeki was delighted to find this little pool filled with rain water.  It had become quite hot during our hike and the warm clothes we had put on that morning at the campsite were rather uncomfortable.  Little guy got to enjoy rolling up his pants and wading in the little pool.

By the time we left that afternoon, his lack of sleep the previous night and missed nap Friday afternoon caught up to him.

We decided that for future camping trips, if we have a tot and a pregnant mama, the most we should try to do is one night at a time (this trip had originally been intended as a two nighter, but after the first night we didn't think we could enjoy that again).