Bonnie and Stuart's Blog » Blog Archive

Aug 02

Camping

We had our annual camping trip with the gang this past weekend. We made the campground reservation late this year, so we had to explore a new location. The boys were excited about camping and even Logan burst out “I can’t believe we are going camping soon”. On Saturday morning, before we headed to the camp, I took the boys to check out the kindergarten playdate first while Stuart packed up our car. Once we arrived at the park, Connor saw a couple of friends he knew, so he immediately warmed up and played with them. Logan did not hesitate and joined them playing hide and seek. By 11am, we said goodbye to his friends, and we met up with Stuart who was all set to go. The drive to the Sanborn County Park was not long, then we were faced with the infamous steep hike that we had to take to go up to our camp area. We could not find a cart, so we just grabbed some lighter items and made our way up. The boys did their best and did not complain much at all. Half way up, we met up with Robyn, Theresa, Martin and Brandon who were about to bring the cart down to meet us. We unloaded our things into the cart and continued our way up to our site. Dave was starting to make lunches for everyone. The boys were happy to play at the campground while Stuart and I went for our belongings in the car. It was a very tough hike while hauling a heavy loaded cart and a full cooler. Stuart and I had to take many stops to catch our breath, and sometimes he took my load too to give me a break. We were very happy to finally make it there. The boys were thrilled too as they did not want to accept the lunch offer from the uncles and aunties until we returned. We enjoyed the lunch while Stuart pitched up our tent; the boys could not wait to go inside the tent to play. Stuart later went up and down the hills a few more times to assist, and to return the carts. He really had his quota of exercise for the day.

Another challenge was the nearby restroom was out of order; we had the options of either a port-a-potty or a hike down 0.3 mile to a nice public restroom. After everyone had the share of climbing up and down the hills throughout the day, we all could finally enjoy the beautiful campground we had. We were surrounded with many tall red woods which gave us nice shade the whole day. The adults just hung out, talked, ate and drank all day long. The kids enjoyed playing with the flying balloons Kathy brought and entertained themselves for awhile. Then the kids played a round of scavenger hunt that I prepared. We put the kids in teams of two, and Connor was thrilled to be paired with his “Big Ian”, The rest of kids were fine with their assigned partners, Logan/Mckayla, Peyton/Marcus and Brandon/Kira. The kids seemed to be excited to play the game, and were motivated to go find their items. Connor and Ian were the first team to bring their findings to me. We reviewed each item together and it was funny when it came to the last item, “Something you think is beautiful” (which was the one I was most curious to see what the teams would come up with). Ian reminded Connor to grab my hand and gestured that he was putting me into the bag. I was so surprised and yet impressed with Ian’s creativity; everybody had a great laugh. The rest of the teams also worked well together and came up one by one to show us their findings. Every team had a little trouble finding a “circle-shaped rock”, but mission was accomplished at the end. Then the kids went off to play together. The group often hung out together and played as a group; they of course enjoyed chasing after Big Ian. Other times, I saw the kids breaking into little groups. Logan played with Marcus sometimes and Connor hung out with Kira quite often. Connor and Kira had taken and showed me their little pretend campfire that they built (with rocks and sticks). Later after a delicious dinner of pork chop and Korean BBQ ribs, we slowly migrated to the lower level to sit around the real campfire. The kids had fun playing with their glowsticks and they wanted to give us a light show too. When it was finally dark, we did not let the kids run up and down the hills anymore to avoid any falls. Then one by one the kids were sent to sleep in their tents. The adults hung out around the campfire, had another round of eating, drinking and chatting until we were tired enough to turn in for the night.

The boys slept fine during the night, we all woke up at our usual time in the morning. The boys wanted to go back outside to play with their friends; Connor told me that he likes Kira and hoped that she was up to play too. Slowly, everyone was up and started packing up; this was definitely much earlier than any previous years. It might be because we all knew that the Tsaos needed to leave early or we all wanted to get a head start for the hike down. Michelle made the kids some hot chocolate, then made breakfast for everyone. The kids were fed, then they were off running around the campsite again. We took another set of group photos, then we loaded up the carts to begin our decent. This was another fun round of camping. Despite the challenging hike, everyone did well and had a good time.