You did WHAT!?!?!

We went camping, I'm not talking about a camper, cottage, yurt, RV, teepee, etc, I'm talking a tent. That's camping to me. In case you didn't know it before John and I are crazy, we love doing things that push us to our boundaries, like having a child. On a whim we decided we needed to get out of town, there's always our standby of NYC, but we never relax while there. We decided on a change of pace, packed up the tent, 3 dogs and our 9 month old and went to the wilderness.

We found a state park about 2 hours from us that would allow the dogs and had some nice hiking trails. Bought some last minute necessities like marshmallows, graham crackers and a Hershey bar and left. Brooks and the dogs slept the whole way (there is a God). Once there we staked out our little plot and proceeded to unpack. We then walked around and discovered we were the only people in a tent. John built us a nice fire and we cooked burgers and roasted corn on the cob (OMG so tasty!!).



Brooks seemed to love the outdoors, except the dirt, unless he's eating it he doesn't want to touch it, crawl on it, not even have the grass tickle his feet. He was contented to stay on the blanket though, which was a nice change of pace from our usual wild man. We garnered a lot of attention from our fellow "campers" as they walked by, a lot of questions were asked about our previous experiences, had the baby been camping before, are the dogs well behaved, etc.. We assured everyone that we sorta of knew what we were doing, but were just throwing caution to the wind. And our throwing worked. We only had a few hiccups, the electric pump was too high a voltage for our car adapter, so I had to blow the air mattress up myself. We discovered Geraldine has molars of steel as she chewed through her leash that tethered her to a tree. And finally we didn't sleep too well, the three of us and three dogs piled onto a full sized air mattress that we thought was a queen.

After a rough night's sleep we leisurely pulled ourselves together, ate our oatmeal and packed up our camp. Our neighbor's strolled by to gawk check on us and we assured them that we were alright, still in tact and ready to go hiking. Which we did. We didn't make it the whole 8 miles like we had hoped, but we did 5. I'm pretty impressed since John and I were both carrying an extra 25 pounds, he with Nanette and Geraldine and me with Pappagano.

John said he hadn't seem me so relaxed outside of out visits to Baton Rouge, and he was right. I had everything that I needed and wanted without the desire to do a thousand things. I just relaxed and enjoyed time with our little family. I might even go camping again, this time we need a bigger bed though.