Camping and Other Methods of Torture

I'm back from camping again. Why, oh why do I torture myself like this? For the pleasure of sleeping out in the wilderness for two nights, I spent a week planning and packing and now I'll spend another week unpacking and cleaning. Although some people would call this a vacation, I believe this actually falls under the category of torture by the Geneva Convention, Amnesty International, and the United Nations.

We actually had a nice time camping with my brother-in-law, Ross, and sister-in-law, Kelly, who have an awesome new camper complete with HDTV and DVD player. All was good until Saturday when it started raining. It rained all afternoon with a brief intermission for s'mores over the fire, then it started up again and stormed all night long. Now Nana, Boo and Princess were in Kelly and Ross's camper watching Pirates of the Caribbean (really roughing it, huh?) and they were all planning on sleeping in their camper that night. That is, until Princess allegedly started snoring and Nana and Boo bailed on her. OK, no big deal, we all scooted over, made room for Nana and Boo who promptly fell asleep in our camper. Then the thunder and lightning started and I spent the rest of the night worrying about Princess who was still in Kelly and Ross's camper. She gets scared and always climbs into bed with me when it storms and I had this fear she was going to try to leave their camper and come into ours in the middle of the night in a thunderstorm. While I laid awake worrying about Princess, my sil was awoken by the sound of Princess trying to open the door to her camper. Thankfully, sil had locked their camper door. She got up to see what was wrong and found Princess sitting in a chair, crying. My wonderful sil calmed Princess down and slept with her so she wouldn't be scared (Princess, not my sil. Although my sil may have been scared too. I'm not sure about that.)

The rain probably wouldn't have been such a big deal except that we'd requested a nice shady spot since our air conditioning was out. Well, we got what we asked for. We got a very, very shady spot. In fact, it was so well shaded that no grass grew there. After the night of rain, we stepped out of the camper and into a lake of mud. And to top it off, it was pleasantly cool and we had no need for air conditioning or shade anyway. Damn that Murphy and his law.

This is my weather forecast for the next five days. It should be fun having the kids, who are already bored with summer vacation, cooped up inside all week. I know I'm looking forward to it.

Uncle Ross (Note the beer. My kids have that effect people.)

Aunt Kelly (It may not be the best picture of her, but at least she isn't flipping me off.)

"Can I keep him, Mom? Pleeeease! Pleeeease? Pretty please! I'll take care of him. I promise!" We did not bring him home, by the way. At least, I hope not. ::::going to check Boo's room::::

This is a bag filled with frogs. Actually this was MY bag that was filled with frogs. It's no longer mine. I think they caught eleven frogs, one caterpillar and two thousand lightning bugs this trip. What is it about boys and their need to catch wildlife wherever we go?

This picture just struck me as funny. It looks like they're walking on water.