How to go bat shit crazy or taking 4 kids camping...

Turns out, it's the same result!

Take the following ingredients:

Girlfriend.
Girlfriend's son and daughter.
Me.
My son and daughter.
Pop-up camper (with canopy, that we very adeptly assembled. Thank goodness!).
Huge van with a wonky trailer hitch.
Tent (sans poles).
Rain (and lots of it).

And you get:

4 kids who have to sleep with you and your girlfriend in the camper, because the tent poles weren't in the bag. (Ok, the pop-up camper does sleep 6, but it's awfully close quarters.)
4 kids who still refused to use the tent, even though you ran back home on Saturday to get the tent poles and spent 2 hours putting the tent together.
2 really bored kids because they refused to plan ahead and pack any reading material or electronic hand held games. (Bet you can't guess whose 2 kids those were.)
2 really content kids because they brought hand held electronic games.
4 disappointed kids because the rain kept us from sustaining a campfire long enough to make smores the old fashioned way and had to use the microwave oven in the pop-up camper.
One happy camper who baited everyone's hooks and actually enjoyed dealing with the worms. (Yes, amazingly enough, this was my daughter! I wish I would have had my camera handy to take a photo of her diggin' in to that container of bait, she was everyone's hero.)
Almost locked in the campgrounds because of said wonky trailer hitch which for some reason would not attach properly when we were trying to leave. The campground workers came by to warn us, and they were literally going to lock the gates and lock us in. Somehow that did not help us complete our task, but we eventually managed and got out just before they locked the gates.

The 2nd night the kids refused to sleep in the tent, even though we got it completely assembled with the canopy and dried out the tent floor with towels. It rained hard almost all night Saturday night. When we went to take down the tent on Sunday, it was completely dry inside. They could have slept in the tent, no problem. Grrrr.

Oh well, we survived. And we will be doing it again...even though my kids think they are going to scam their dad or Anastasia into letting them stay with them instead. I've spoken to both, neither of them will be scammed, they are on to the kids. Lol!

So for the next camping trip, we will add the following ingredients:

Electronic hand held games.
Reading material.
Ipods.
Board games.
Outdoor games.
No rain, or at least not every day.
Plenty of dry firewood.

Yes, I'm a happy camper. I'm enjoying it. A few tense moments with the kids due to the weather, but nothing that can't be resolved with better planning (as in planning for outdoor AND indoor activities for them). It was not a bad intro to camping with them. Yes, I'd do it again!

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