A Tale of Two Trips

On Sunday we returned from our second family camping trip. 
In one word...
AWESOME! 
My children are amazing campers.
However...(you knew there would be a however)...camping hasn't always been that great for our little foursome. 

A little over a year ago we decided to go on the maiden voyage camping trip of my in-laws new travel trailer.  We went over a long weekend to the beautiful North Georgia Mountains.  Here are the names of the poor souls who were involved:
Tim, Brittney, Graham, Lilly, Jan, Lee and Grandma Holland (Gigi)

The trip started off just fine.  It was beautiful, cool mountain weather.  The trailer set-up perfectly...and all was well.
That is...until the sun went down.
The kids went to bed just fine while the grown ups went outside to enjoy the night air.  Shortly after they went to sleep a mountain monsoon hit.  Since there was nothing we could do outside in the rain, and since the kids were asleep inside, we had to just go to bed. 
We were all spread out on different beds throughout the camper.  Graham slept beside me in the pack-n-play, Lilly was on the bottom bunk, Tim on the top bunk, in-laws in their snug little room, and Gigi on the table-bed. 
Suddenly the trailer was awakened by the sound of a blood curdling 8 month old screaming.  I leaped out of bed only to realize I was drenched from head to toe!  The camper was leaking right above mine and Graham's bed!  And sure enough...Graham was as wet as I was...AND ANGRY ABOUT IT! 
After drying us all off my selfless father-in-law said he would sleep in the wet bed and I could take the big bed with Jan. 
Here's the problem...
Graham is now wide awake!!  So I put him in bed with me and tried to get him to go to sleep, but that just meant play-time with Mommy! 
After about 45 minutes of this we heard a loud THUD by the bunk bed.
LILLY FELL OUT ONTO HER FACE!!!  She was lying in a limp little pile of sheets not moving or saying a word. 
Being the super-hero that he is, Tim threw his legs over the top bunk to rescue his little adventurous sleeping beauty.  However (there's that word again!) as his legs were flying through the air they hit the unsuspecting thermostat on the wall and broke it clean off. 

Commence the bunny hop!!

Since he was too busy screaming in his mouth, while holding his broken toe, and bunny hopping as quietly as possible...I had to rescue the still limp sleeping princess. 
I threw the hyper wet baby at Grandma and dashed across the trailer, lifted the STILL sleeping babe and placed her back in the bunk.

And she never woke up.

At this point I thought the night would never end.
We couldn't find a clock anywhere! 

Finally Graham fell asleep in my arms.  I was able to get him to stay asleep in the pack-n-play and then crawled back into the bed.

All the while Gigi never woke up!  We found out later she took a sleeping pill before bed...smart woman!


As you can see I was a little hesitant to agree to another camping trip.  I was assured the leak had been fixed, that a rail would go on the bunk for Lilly, and Tim would be nowhere near the thermostat in the middle of the night.
So trip number two began, and I quickly saw how much a difference a year makes.
Graham loved every second of camping.
The swimming in the lake (as long as that mean old life jacket stayed far away from him), the eating outside (as long as he didn't have to sit in that insulting booster seat), the sleeping in a tent (as long as Daddy was in there with him and a window air conditioner unit was in place)...he loved it.

Moral of the story (for the Holland's at least) it's great to be able to laugh at the hard trips...because it makes the great ones even greater.