adventures in the great outdoors.

We ventured out on our first family camping trip last weekend.  Matt decided he didn't want to go too far, in case it was a complete disaster and we wanted to drive home at 2am. So we took off for the weekend to the exotic city of Mt. Vernon!  

We were gone for about 22 hours and this is what we packed. Ridiculous.

 We started out with a hike through Little Mountain Park.  It had great trails not too intense for Carter but still fun to explore and see new things.  Lucy wasn't too fond of the backpack but stuck it out for a while.

 Carter kept saying this was the best hike he'd ever been on (and really the only "real" hike he'd ever been on).

 It had some beautiful look out points with stunning views of Skagit County.

 We had a picnic lunch, explored a little longer and then headed over to our campground at Bay View State Park.

 I've always heard that kids will get dirtier than you could ever imagine while camping.  I packed 200 wipes and 6 changes of clothes for each kid.  And within 5 minutes Lucy was covered in dirt....head to toe.

 We got out our stuff and set up camp.  The kids were excited, even though they look a little less than thrilled right here.

 In all of our packing we completely forgot to bring toys for the kids. Luckily we grabbed a bucket and ball at the beach house before we left so the kids had to be super creative over the weekend. Our campsite was surrounded by blackberries, which luckily kept the kids occupied for a while too.

 And then it was play time. They desperately asked Matt about 87 times when they could finally go in tent.  The second the air mattress was blown up they rushed in and giggled, jumped, fell and bounced all over the place!

 We headed down to the beach for a bit and ran into 596 Canadians (we were surrounded by a huge family reunion!).  Luckily there was still plenty of room to play on the beach. Carter even got to fly his kite for a bit.

 The tide was in pretty high that afternoon so the kids mostly climbed on rocks and dug in the dirt.  The next morning the tide was out for miles (literally). Matt and I had never seen such a low tide, it was pretty incredible.

 There was a burn ban across the state so we quickly changed our dinner plans to cooking hot dogs on the camping stove instead of roasting them in a campfire.  Wasn't quite the same but we made it work.

 Lucy loved to just watch everything.  She refused to wear her shoes which just added to the filth that covered her little body.

 We tried making smore's but roasting marshmallows didn't have the same effect on the stove.  And once we finally made one for Carter he complained the graham cracker and marshmallow were touching and just wanted it right out of the bag.

 Lucy was content with eating animal crackers so we were left with a huge box of graham crackers and about 4 extra Hershey bars to take home!

 Lucy liked using the campfire as a step stool.

 Getting the kids to fall asleep in the tent was probably the most unpleasant 3 hours of our lives.  Lucy finally went down but Carter was a mess.  He was a huge mix of emotions ranging from excited, nervous, extremely overtired, a bit confused and just plain difficult.  We battled over and over again and tried several attempts to get him to sleep before finally giving up, putting him the car and having Matt drive around until he fell asleep and then transferred him into the sleeping bag.  Because we couldn't have a campfire, it was pretty cold and dark with not much to do other than fall asleep ourselves at 9:30pm!

The kids slept fairly well for their first night in a tent.  Lucy had a 12am shift from the pack n'play to my sleeping bag, Carter had a meltdown because his sleeping bag wasn't zipped up right, Matt ended up with no sleeping bag and we somehow managed to squeeze all of us on a queen size air mattress for the rest of the night.  But, we did it!!!

Early the next morning Lucy woke up at 5:45am so we ventured out for a 1.5 hour walk together while the rest of the campgrounds slept. Then it time for a graham cracker snack!

 We ate a quick breakfast and headed back down to the beach.

 Because most normal people were just waking up we had the entire beach to ourselves for over an hour!  The kids had so much room to run and play....and get ridiculously muddy.

 Our super tired eyes, dirty clothes and hot, french pressed coffee!

 After a while Lucy was sick and tired of all the mud.

 We found a nice rock and had an animal cookie snack (at 9:30am - it's camping, all rules are off, right?).

 We finally headed back to our site, played for a while and began the big clean up to pack up.

 In the end we had 2 very happy kids, 2 exhausted parents and 5 loads of laundry waiting for us.

But it was worth it!  Can't wait for our 2nd annual trip next year!!!