Thursday, February 7, 2013

Winter Camping

This just about got lost in the recesses of my memory, but luckily, I was procrastinating doing the dishes by going through old photos tonight and I remembered. Back in December, just a few days before Christmas, we joined some new friends for some desert camping.

Now, you might ask yourself who goes camping, in December, with a one and a half year old?

Oh, and with a (then) 2 month old?

Oh yes. That would be us.

And it was Ian's first real camping experience (because that time we went camping when we were first married and it was so cold that we ended up sleeping in the car doesn't count.)

We loaded up and headed out to the sand dunes that are about half an hour away from our house. We unpacked, set up camp, and just hung out talking for most of the afternoon.

Sophia did alot of nothing, seeing as she was just 2 months old.

She got held by people and napped in our tent between feedings.

 After the heat of the day broke (it was still very hot at mid day, despite it being December!) we all explored the dunes around our campsite.


 Grace, as you can imagine, loved it.

 We taught her the proper way to slide down a dune...
 And then demonstrated what NOT to do....

 We grilled out and our South African friends knew how to grill out the right way- they brought steak! One by one the eight kids were tucked into bed and the adults sat up around the fire until our eyes could not stay open any longer.

It was COLD at night. The desert is a place of extremes and we were extremely cold that night. Since I couldn't really cover Sophia up, she ended up sleeping between us for the first time ever. She nursed all night long, whenever she got cold and needed a cuddle. Grace slept in her pack-n-play in our tent and woke up a few times confused at where she was and very cold.

Not much sleep happened that night, but in the morning, when we woke up, the view was fantastic...

 Danishes, eggs, and coffee were consumed while the kids played in the slightly damp sand.

 And then we loaded up and headed out. Actually, I put Sophia in the car while we started packing up and when I checked on her there was over 3 dozen flies in the car and crawling on her (winter is fly season here.) I had to drive back and forth on the access road for nearly an hour with the girls in the car to keep the flies out and to get them to nap. Finally our campsite was cleaned up and we headed out!

We had a great time but I'm not sure we'll do it again for awhile! We value our sleep a little too much!

4 comments:

Emily Powell said...

ha! I would not have braved that! I REALLY value my sleep! ha! Good for you :)

Rachel and John said...

Yikes! I hate when it's super cold while camping! We went into the mountains and camped before we had kids and it was FREEZING at night! The dog laid on top of me because he was so cold. He's so heavy but I need him to help keep me warm.

But it still looks like a great experience!!

Alison H said...

FUN FUN TIMES! This is so happening when we're there!

Kelli said...

who needs a sandbox is right. loved it!