Big Eddy

One day I asked Jonathan what he wanted to do. He replied simply "go camping on Friday." As I was about to respond to him that we can't just go camping in 2 days, I caught myself and thought: why can't we go camping in 2 days? So, Andrew and I made some plans. It just so happened that weekend was the first and last weekend that Andrew would be available to camp with us so we had to go! Unfortunately, Luke and Adrian were both gone for the weekend and missed out:( We will be camping again this summer though, so don't you worry!

After much debate and research we decided to give Big Eddy campground a try. It was okay....a few more negatives than positives, but we still had a lot of fun! We arrived in the afternoon on Friday, June 3. It was an adventure getting there since, for the first time ever, Mr. Gps failed us! We were following along and got to where Mr. Gps said "you have arrived" and we most definitely had not "arrived" anywhere! We underwent a lot of debate and decision making, but in the end decided to turn around and see if we had turned left instead of right. We found it, but Mr. Gps was still insisting that we make a legal U-turn when possible!

Our tent site was in a loop that was at the end of the campground and we were the only "tenants" for the weekend in that loop! The positive was that our kids weren't able to disturb other people too much and Jonathan could just wander around in front of our site and "explore" his surroundings without getting in the way. The negatives were that our site had the highway directly on the other side of the fence behind us and there were about a million motorcyclists riding with their engines roaring and that on one side of our site it was the edge of the campground that was only marked off by a metal rope between two trees that just so happened to be waist high for a 2 year old. It would have been nice for it to be quieter and for a more "secure" setting where it wasn't possible for our kids to escape and make it out onto the highway in a matter of seconds if they had so chosen to do! It was so funny though because Jonathan was scared of the motorcycles and big semis. He would look up and yell at them "be quiet guys, you are scaring me!" or "don't you know I am scared and trying to sleep?!"

There was a small little park on the premises that we spent quite a bit of time at. In fact, Reagan got to ride the swings for the first time and loved it! Jonathan did not like the swings at all, but he did find plenty of other things to do. He declared all of the other children he met to be his "friend" and one little boy looked at him funny and said "I'm not your friend, you don't even know me!" Jonathan just smiled and said "okay friend." It was a pleasant walk to the playground from our tent....most times. There was one time where I got to walk by some really special people giving each other tattoos at a picnic table. All I could think was "how can that by clean?!" That's the crazy in me I guess, but really...how do you sterilize your equipment and keep things clean at a picnic table outside? Fun times.

The second evening Jonathan found a little stick and started playing with it like it was a Harry Potter wand. I decided to make Adrian a wand as a gift for his birthday from Jonathan. Of course when Jonathan saw the awesomeness that was the wand, he wanted his own. See below for that story!

Here is a collage of some of the pics from our trip (click on the image to make it bigger):

Shortly after I made Jonny his wand he was walking around shouting "abra dabba" to everything and creating magic in his imagination. The he needed to go potty so Andrew took him over to the biffy that was closest. I stayed behind playing with Reagan. A few minutes later I hear Andrew yelling to me that he needs my help so I zipped Reagan into the tent and booked it over there. I discovered that somehow Jonathan had locked himself inside the biffy and you could hear some splashing. Andrew was telling me something about Jonathan getting inside first and locking the door before Andrew had a chance to get in there with him, while I was pounding on the door telling Jonathan that he needed to unlock the door rightnow and Jonny was declaring "okay momma, I will. Just a minute momma, I am cleaning da toilet." Me: "you open this door right now! 1...." click and Jonathan came out all Innocent looking with a "wand" covered in nastiness that I chucked off into the bushes. Jonathan was so proud of himself for "cleaning the toilet." He was just lucky that he didn't get any of the stuff on himself and that he is so cute. I washed him up and banned him to the tent for the rest of the night. However, in retrospect, I don't know how much of a punishment this was since he just spent the time until bedtime watching movies on Andrew's Ipod. Here he is:

Jonathan was crying from the tent: "I so sorry momma. I not do it. I not clean toilets ever again." I couldn't help but laugh! Jonathan is such a character.

I told Andrew that the camping trip went really well, it just wasn't perfect. I needed all of my boys together in order for it to be perfect! Hopefully we make it out to a campground again soon!