Friday, April 22, 2011

camp.out.

during my pregnancy, we had been planning our inaugural family camping trip this spring.

with crosby's early arrival, our plans to camp had to be slightly modified.  we still were committed to camping, as lily was so excited with the prospect of the adventure.  but, we didn't want to be far from the hospital or anywhere that would not have cell phone service in case the hospital called.

enter the backyard camping trip...


yesterday during nap time, ryan and i set up the tent (er, house...yes, we know the tent is enormous.  you see, when i purchased it for ryan, i was hoping our family would grow.  and i have hopes that we can share our tent with family or friends.  and they always say you should buy a tent that sleeps one or two more than you plan on having in the tent for adequate space...so a ten, yes ten, person tent seemed reasonable).  lily peeked from her window the entire time we set it up and was giddy when she got up.  she could hardly wait to get in.
our fearless grillmaster.  it is almost like a bonfire, right?
getting ready for s'mores!

lily was SO excited about her sleeping arrangements, that she immediately wanted to go to bed once we got in the tent.  we tried to tell her a story before bed, but she was truly so excited about her sleeping bag and lantern, that she just wanted to be tucked in!
finn has this awesome down sleep sack that kept him nice and toasty in the night.

once the kids were tucked in, ryan and i enjoyed a nice evening from our deck.  we could hear the kids chatting back and forth from their beds and it was absolutely heartwarming.  they were loving it.

once it got cool and late, ryan and i decided it was time to crawl into our sleeping bags.  the kids were sleeping peacefully and it seemed perfect.

well, almost perfect...
a few small details...

-within ten minutes of us getting into the tent, a bird did it's business all over our rain fly.  awesome.
-our backyard is on a rather significant slant, and so all night we all slid to the bottom of the tent.
-it rained a bit in the night.
-and a few hours before the sun rose, i became so worried my kids were cold that i couldn't sleep.  they were both sleeping soundly, but i was so worried about them that i couldn't get any shut eye.  so, with just a bit of darkness left, we decided it was time to call the camp out quits and bring the kids into their warm beds.

however, when ryan got finn up to bring him in, he had the biggest smile on his face and the first thing he said was, "lily coming??"
i almost cried.  it was the sweetest moment when i realized that the first thing he thought of when being woken up from a deep sleep was whether his big sister would be joining him.  oh how he adores her.

and today lily has asked over and over if we can camp again tomorrow night.

it was perfect.

1 comment:

PAT said...

so adorable!! Courtney, you have a way with words like no other!! Your writing is amazing!! Thanks for everything you share with us! You are a born author. :)