1st in our Series titled "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time"

There comes a time in the life of a parent (say, when your kids are both under the age of 4) where you think: This is too dang easy! Where is the challenge? Where is the drama? The mystery? These kids are practically raising themselves!

So we thought: How can we raise the stakes a little? I know! Lets load up the kids and all their crap and take them camping! Nothing says camping like diapers and babies who still eat things off the ground!

Anyhow, to begin at the beginning.... My brother-in-law, Dave, and his lovely wife Sarah are in town for the aforementioned wedding. And since they don't get much chance to hang with the chicks, we all decided to go camping. We bought a superginormous tent, packed the car full of gear, and headed to Starved Rock.

We arrived and got set up while the girls checked out our new digs. Then Dean and Uncle Dave took the girls to the ever-so convenient campground park while Aunt Sarah and I went off in search of firewood and marshmallows. We found both (though we somehow managed to buy the world's WORST marshmallows, which was rather disappointing.) and also had a rather scary encounter with Jack of Jack's Store. If you're headed out that way, we recommend skipping Jack's "store."

Once Sarah and I had used our super navigational skills to find our way back to camp, Dean got a fire going. I helped by reading Harry Potter. The kids entertained themselves thusly: Ella played in Uncle Dave's tent in a heroic attempt to see how many mosquitoes she could offer housing to. And Sadie played with markers--taking the caps off, putting them back on, and also sniffing and tasting the markers. A better parent might have intervened, but she was happy and I was trying to read!
Later, we enjoyed a standard camping dinner: potato chips, corn on the cob, hot dogs. And then just hung out (some of us were in our PJs at this point):


Overall, we had a very enjoyable evening up until the point that it was time to put Sadie to bed. I'll spare you the rather boring details, but suffice it to say that the kid was tired, teary, and absolutely refused to go to sleep.

Eventually, we all slept. It would have made a cute picture, but there was no way I'd risk waking anyone up! Dean and I slept rather poorly for no real reason, though Sadie's 4:00 wake-up call didn't help matters.

Despite being a bit crabby and sleep-deprived the next day, we headed to Starved Rock for a hike. Ella is becoming quite the little hiker! She did an impressive job. Sadie was tired and glassy-eyed but was a total trooper in the backpack--not one complaint from her and she even ended up falling asleep in there! Poor baby.

In all seriousness, the camping went pretty well. I'd say Sadie is a touch too young for it. Ella, though, was just perfect and had a great time. It was an exhausting experience (sleepwise), but it can't have been that bad since we're planning to do it again in a couple weeks! And we really, really enjoyed spending time with Uncle Dave and Aunt Sarah. In fact, Ella is talking about moving to Seattle now....