We decided to end our summer with a family camping trip. We had never been camping by ourselves - we had only gone with my family. My dad loves camping and has all the stuff - so we had never really purchased anything for it. I spent most of the summer buying sleeping bags and chairs and other camping stuff at garage sales. In the end we had to borrow a few things (like a tent). We found a beautiful camp site about 2 hours away.
The kids were very interested in the fire and would report to Jason when it would start to go out.
We had a ton of wild flowers growing all over our camp site and I think Madison took it as a personal challenge to see how many she could pick.
I want to give a shout out to Jason. It might be an understatement to say Jason does not love camping - but I do. He never wanted to camp with a baby - but always said once our kids were old enough we would try it. It went well enough that we are going to buy the rest of our stuff for Christmas and go every year now. He is so sweet - it is a lot of hard work for him and am grateful he is willing to take us/me camping!
Also - I wanted to give one more observation. Other than girls camp I had never been camping with out my dad. Which is something I had never realized or thought made a difference. I realized that it SO had. In my mind there are things that are done camping a certain way because that is how my dad did it. The most tangible example of this was in the morning. Camping is weird because you never really know what time it is when you wake up because it gets light and the birds start chirping at like 4:30 am. So you never really know what time to get out of your tent. I was laying in the tent and I realized that I always knew it was time to get up when I would hear my dad outside at the fire or picnic table fiddling around with stuff. He was usually starting the fire, or playing around with his fishing poles and flys or in my older years even doing some work. I realized what a comforting sound that was to me. I was laying there in the tent and desperately wanted to hear my dad outside fiddling around with stuff. I love that my parents took me camping. I only knew what to do because I watched them do it every single year my entire life. So many of my favorite childhood memories and even some profound life moments happened while camping. In my early teen years I would go out "hiking" by myself (walking around the camp grounds) and would "think" - I took journals and sat at over looks and felt the spirit and learned about God and His creations. The Spirit of God is in the mountains - and I know that because my mother and father took me there often. Thank you.
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