We love car camping

Car camping is great. Since we love it so much, we went for the weekend with our good friends Dan, Jackie and Rebekah Dowd. Dan, Dylan, Rebekah and Grady all have birthdays in September so we celebrated by having the 1st ever Dan-Dylan-Beka-Grady birthday camping trip. This way, we don't have to have formal birthday parties (because 29-year-olds and 1-year-olds really don't care if they have a party or not) and we were able to enjoy one more weekend of summer in the great outdoors.

On Friday, we left Grandma at home with Craig (thank you!) and loaded up the SUVs with 2 kayaks, 2 pack-n-plays, 1 toddler bed, 1 dog crate, 2 ice chests, 2 tents, 2 boxes of food, 2 crates of kitchen stuff, 2 air mattresses, bedding for 7 people and 2 dogs, a crate or two of camping gear (lanterns, matches, hand sanitizer, toilet paper, etc), a six-sided baby play pen and a bag full of games. Somehow, after all of the stuff was loaded, there was still room for two adults, one dog and a kid or two per car. Our destination was Lindsey Lake up near Tahoe. After traveling on a bumpy, dusty road for miles and miles we arrived to find that the lake and camp area were closed for the season. While we stopped to come up with plan B, Beka got stung by a yellowjacket on her lip and Emma cut her hand open and was bleeding. Ahh the joys of camping. So while us mothers took care of our ailing children, the boys went scouting for a new camp site and found another lake close by that worked. The only caveats- we had to park our cars and carry our gear in (see above list) and there were no camp fires allowed so no hobo pies or smores. Had we known this was the case, we may have attempted to pack a bit lighter, but what's the fun in that!

After about 40 hours of sleeping, kayaking in the "banana boats," playing Rumikub, eating- a lot, and Emma's eye being swollen shut from a yellow jacket bite we had to pack up, hike everything back to the cars and come home. Yup, 40 hours. We probably spent more time planning and packing than we did actually camping, but it was fun nonetheless. Hope you enjoyed the pictures............