Kid Camping

I had this great idea that Clyde & I should take all three of the little granddaughters (ages 3, 4 & 6) camping for a weekend.  I'm not positive what I was thinking...Clyde asked me repeatedly "are you sure you want to do this?"  Sure, how bad could it be?  It'll be fun.  I had great memories of my sister and I going camping with my grandparents.  I also remember falling out of the bunk in the trailer and giving my grandma a black eye.  Hmmm, obviously I had not thought this through very well.

If you've ever read Patrick McManus's books (his stories are hilarious) he talks about taking his kids camping and taught them that when they stubbed a toe, etc it was "Details, details, details..." so I thought we should have our own family motto for the weekend.  Clyde and I taught the girls that "No Whining" was our motto.  It turned out to be a pretty good motto as far as mottos go.  We used it a lot  during the course of the weekend.  In fact, I may even go so far as to say it was  a stroke of genius.

We had three girls loaded up after a 2hr+ drive to pick up Ava & Fiona.  June, in the middle, lives close to us but was a trooper on the drive to pick up the other girls.

 

We wanted to keep the drive short after that, to keep everyone smiling and holding hands, so we only had a half hour drive to where we were camping.  Although it was long enough to be asked "are we there yet?" approximately 207 times.

 

The first order of business was to blow up the toys for the pool.

When I say we were "camping" I didn't mean we were roughing it.  We stayed in a nice campground with full hookups for the trailer, a pool & a playground for the kids.

 

So, to the pool we went where Fiona was enthralled with the outdoor shower.  It was apparently more exciting than the pool itself.

We had to dry off out in the sun.

 

Popsicles back at the campsite because it goes without saying you need a snack after the pool.

We spent quite a bit of time at the playground.  Fiona in particular LOVED the swings

the higher the better for this girl.

 

She could've stayed there all night if Clyde kept pushing her on the swing.

 

Oh boy, you should've heard the squealing and giggling....Fiona made a lot of noise too.

 

We did manage a little nature walk.  And of course everybody knows you need to carry a stick and have a mermaid Barbie handy when you venture out into the woods.  The girls come prepared.

 

The little train of girls. 

Clyde attempted to teach them how to identify the different trees....alder, maple, cedar, fir...

but it was more fun to poke at things with sticks

and find the perfect rock to toss in the water.

 You can't go to the river without throwing some rocks in.

 

We even did a group craft project back at the camp ground.  Clyde was good about remembering our "no whining" motto.

 

 Glue in the hands of a three year old...she took her project seriously.

 

It was amazing how some rocks, trees and a small mound of dirt kept them entertained. 

While we were at the camp site Clyde also invented a new game called "Grampa Says"  as in "Grampa says run up the hill", "Grampa says run down the hill", "Grampa says run around the tree", "say Grampa is great!"...it was a pretty good game.

 

Ready to load up and head out, the girls had to say good bye to their favorite rocks.
 

The "no whining" motto may become permanent, it worked so well.  There was still some crying and a little melt down (I happy to say that neither Clyde nor I ended up crying or having a melt down though it may have been close).  But when one of the girls was upset, the other two would say "remember our motto....no whining".  That's some good peer pressure right there.

In fact, after we dropped off Ava & Fiona we were down to just June in the truck, you could hear her in the back seat saying to herself, "What's our motto? NO MORE WHINING!  What's our motto? NO MORE WHINING!  Grampa is great!" 

We taught them well.