Last night, Matthew and Hannah went camping for the first time. They were so excited that they were both running around, giggling, talking about camping... Ron had gone into work, so it was already past Hannah's bedtime when he got home, and then we headed out to the tent in the yard. The birds were so loud, there was no way they were going to go right to sleep. Ron went back into the house to have dinner and get ready for bed, and then it was my turn to get ready for bed. At that point, both of the kids decided that they had to go potty, so we brought them both back into the house...

The good things about camping were that when it finally got dark, we could see millions and millions of stars in our backyard. I don't think there are words for how spectacular it was. The kids got to help Ron put the tent up, so they learned about something new. We woke up to fresh air and birds chirping.

The bad things about camping were that the kids had to get up often to go potty (thank goodness we were in the yard so the bathroom was not far). The temperature dropped to the 60s overnight so the air was quite chilly in the tent. In the morning, there was condensation on the inside of the tent so the other thing that woke us up was water dripping on our heads. And, no one got enough sleep.

I think that next time, I would bring Matthew's cd player out so that we had a little white noise to help us all go to sleep, and we would get the kids to bed earlier. Next time, though, I think we need to finish blowing up the air mattress for the grownups...