Lo hicimos!!!

Do you know the "We did it" dance? I am doing it in my head this morning quite pleased with me. I won't bore you with my song, but I had a successful and enjoyable and fully reproducible camping experience. I did not brush my teeth in the creek either, or pee there for that matter. Just forwent (is that the past tense of forgo) the shower thing altogether, so I am a little rank this morning. BUT I can move and I did not get carried away by a bear or a host of bugs. The cot I slept on was ok in the comfort department, I wouldn't prefer it to my bed by any means, but it'll do for a night or two of camping.

We finally crawled in bed around 10:30 because Olivia, who is quite the morning person and a grouch at night, was tired and ready for bed. Sarah on the other hand is much like me and could have stayed up all night and slept all morning long. We finally convinced little night owl to go to bed and sometime in the night she woke up crying because she did not know where she was. SOooooOOO, she got in the bed, no cot, with me. This cot is only about 21 inches wide and she did her best to take up at least 18 of them. I spent the rest of the night laying on the pole of the cot and trying desperately not to fall out. I was warm though... until Olivia woke up crying because she was cold so we piled on her Sarah's unused sleeping bag and then my second blanket. So now I was cold and on the pole with the sweetest pair of knees in my chest and the stinkiest baby breathe right in my face. Needless to say any sleep I might have gotten floated right down the creek. I lay there making the most of it listening to the song of the frogs and the burble of the creek. It was lovely. Not to mention the snores of the other campers. I am sure it was not the kids snoring. (On a completely different note: When did I become one of the old people in a peer group of snorers? I remember laughing at these old folks as a kid and now they are my friends. NOTICE I did not include myself-- I don't snore.)

I finally laid there in the light of the nearly full moon wanting the morning to come just so that I could get off that pole. The time came for Ernie to leave to go to work and he moved Sarah over to his cot. Now I slept till the sun came up and Sarah announced to us that it was light out and asked if she could come to my bed and snuggle. So, I scooted back to the pole after about an hour reprieve and snuggled with my little turkey. Olivia then woke up and said she was still tired and was going to stay in bed for a while longer to wake up.

Random turn here, but when it came time to take down the tent I learned a thing or two about how NOT to take a tent down. It is important not to pull on the pole of the rain fly to try to get it to come out especially when your tent is not staked to the ground. I pulled and toppled the tent on its side. Well, that is one way to do it I suppose, but certainly not the best. At this point I had lots of help. I think my greenneck (I like that not a word better than greenhorn) was obvious and my friends felt sorry for me. Oh yeah and a note to the people who make tent bags or sleeping bag bags... Why on earth do you have to make them so stinking small? Surely you could make them about 10% bigger and things would go back in as easily as they came out. FYI it is very hard to put these things back into bags that a machine had to have put them into in the first place! I think only Martha Stewart has mastered returning things to their proper bags in a nice tight neat fashion.

I have got to mention this too... As soon as we got home Olivia HAD to take a shower and get cleaned up. She said she was filthy and really needed a shower.