The Fourth of July is one of the best times of the year. There is fun, fireworks, bbq, and even a bit of camping if your lucky. This year my husband and I wanted to give our kids all of those things. You know it is there right of childhood or some crap like that. We wanted to give them a full 4th experience. Boy are we stupid over-achiever parents.....
I am an idea person. I love thinking up new ways of doing things, new experiences that our kids need to have, and ways to make life fun! I am really good at coming up with ideas.... BUT.... I need people around to kind of "shoot some holes in them" sometimes. I need someone to help think of all the things that could go wrong or would be the negatives of my brilliant plans. That is actually a negative to being a pretty positive person (that is weird to write). On this particular plan nobody "shot any holes in the plan". I wonder if that is because I said it out loud in front of our kids before really thinking about it much or even discussing it???? NO THAT COULDN'T BE IT!
We decided to camp out in our backyard after having a small bbq. We walked down a block and watched the fireworks for a few minutes and then back to our campout. That is really all they wanted to do was get in the tent. I realize that many are hysterically laughing right now because you know what I should have known. A 20 year old body camping holds up way better than our 30 year old bodies did. Let's be glad that we are only in our early 30's! Is this why older people get RV's??? The last time we went camping (4 or 5 years ago I think) I remember not being phased by sleeping on the ground. This time however the short amount of time we did sleep out there it was miserably uncomfortable (and that is actually me being positive minded about it)! So here we all are 2 kids, 2 excited adults, and one dog on complete sensory overload trying to get comfy in our huge tent.
2 year old is out within in 10 seconds. I am thinking this is gonna be easy...oh but it never is! Is it?
6 year old wants to go back in the house. HUH??? He states that he doesn't really want to be out here to sleep anymore....oh no he didn't. Didn't he realize the work that went into doing this? didn't he realize that I was giving him MEMORIES???? NO of course not he is 6!! I calmly talk to him telling him all the great things about camping and he decides that it will be fun and falls asleep 5 minutes later.
The dog after sniffing every square inch of our two room tent settled but startled several more times before settling down right on top of the kid's legs. I smiled and went to sleep.....yeah right guys seriously. It wouldn't be in this post if it were easy would it. I really wonder why people think this fun anymore. This includes me. Several times I thought about going in and leaving my husband out there with the kids and just pulling the whole "I have cancer and the doctor says no sleeping on the ground....or I have cancer and I can easily get sick. The elements out here are too much." I thought of all the reasons I could give and must of fallen asleep. So actually I did fall asleep with a smile thinking about all the excuses I could give.
Then 4am rolls around. The sun was beginning to come up and my son woke me up to go to the bathroom. We go in the house and come back out. My husband who hadn't slept either was awake. I then have the great plan....."Hey, well we camped outside all night and it is morning (I made that 'we can count this now as good parenting' face). How about we go in to the couch and put a movie on and some coffee????" He got what I was saying immediately and we all went in the house with a blanket and pillow. We piled on the couch and watched.....don't have a clue! We all slept there till 8am! Well everyone except my husband....he was wide awake!
It didn't stop there though....when we did get up. We had breakfast and coffee outside. We got backpacks on (the kids) and "hiked" our neighborhood. Then we geocashed the rest of the day.
Overall, our parenting this weekend gets an A. We tried our best, we did it, and we made it through. That is all parenting really is though... Hey isn't that like life??? I think we did give our kids memories that hopefully they will take with them to adulthood and eventually use as reasons why they have all the issues they have later! (just kidding but that's what I do)
I think this is the best thing you can give someone...memories! It doesn't matter if the trip was good or bad. It matters if they remember it!
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