So, my super awesome parents gave us their old 4 person tent at the beginning of the summer and Eric and I finally had a chance to use it this past weekend! It was a beautiful but slightly disastrous experience. Haha. So first off, I started the trip feeling pretty stressed out because I took it upon myself to do all the things. I can be a little bit of an overachiever so for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to make three different types of overnight oats for us to eat Saturday morning as well as making pizza from scratch for dinner and packing up everything for the trip by myself all while trying to watch our super rambunctious little man in the 2 hours between when I got home from work and when we were planning on leaving for our trip. Yeah, I obviously need to take our apostles' advice a little more and SIMPLIFY my life.
Anyway, once Eric got home from work we realized that the air mattress we were planning on taking (because I'm what Jim Gaffigan calls "indoorsy" and am much more into glamping than camping) did not have a foot or battery operated pump. So Eric called Fred Meyer and they assured him that they had both a battery operated pump as well as an adapter for the car to allow a regular AC plug to be plugged in. So we got everything loaded up and hit up Fred Meyer on the way to the campsite- oh and in all the hustle and bustle promptly forgot our new camping chairs that we had bought specifically for this weekend- facepalm! Anyway, once we got to the store we realized that the battery pump would not fit our air mattress so we elected for the (super expensive!) car adapter instead.
We had expected Levi to sleep most of the drive up to the campsite because we didn't end up leaving until after 7 and it was an hour and a half drive. Alas, little man decided to show off his stubborn side and instead of sleeping thought it would be a good idea to scream, cry and whine intermittently throughout the whole drive. Needless to say, this did not help my stress levels.
Once we got out to the area we wanted to camp in (Alder Glen) we found that we had arrived too late and all of the campsites were taken. I had a momentary freak out moment because it was starting to get dark and we needed to find a place and pitch our tent! Thankfully, I had seen a promising looking meadow near the road not far from Alder Glen. So we turned the car around and after a quick inspection revealed a fire pit already in place, set to work setting up our tent. Eric and I got it up quickly but then realized that the air mattress would not fit through the door once inflated so we would need to carry our tent close enough to the car that the cord for the mattress would fit out the door and into the car. This also necessitated moving our car to as close as possible to the clearing we were in. Upon doing so, I noticed a quite clear "no camping" sign displayed. Awesome. Well, it was quickly getting dark so we just threw caution to the wind and decided it was worth it to risk the fine. Yep, that's our version of living dangerously.
Anway, the task then commenced of us awkwardly carrying our set up tent over the rocks and bushes in the gathering darkness till we could perch it near enough to the car for the cord to reach. Meanwhile, Levi had decided he had definitely had enough of this whole being in the car thing and was crying, "mama! dada! mama! dada!" repeatedly. I think it was around this point where I told Eric that I hated camping. Haha. Once, plugged in the air mattress started to inflate for about 3 seconds and then quit. We tried again. Nothing. We tried again. Again nothing. We turned the car off and on. Nothing. It was not going to work. So then I, the glamper, had to face the prospect of sleeping on the ground with literally no padding. Again awesome. But it was late, little man desperately needed to go to bed, and I wasn't about to repack everything we had already dragged out into the clearing and make the 1.5 hour drive home. So we precariously carried our tent back out into the clearing and made a bed inside with as many of the blankets underneath us as possible without freezing with nothing on top of us. I then got bubba ready for bed, and while I was in the middle of that, our lantern suddenly and spontaneously broke. Like the light didn't just go off, but like pieces literally fell off the lantern! Haha. At this point, I started really wanting to bust out some strong curse words and wondered if there was some force that really did not want us to camp this weekend. It occurred to me briefly that I was acting exactly like Laman and Lemuel and murmuring a lot and that doing so was not helping the situation any. This helped me kind of buck up and look on the bright side, at least a little :).
So yeah, to make a long story short, Levi did end up going to sleep fine (after somewhat lengthy persuading) and sleeping through the night and Eric and I did get to build a beautiful campfire and make some perfect s'mores. We couldn't see the stars despite being in the perfect little clearing because of the cloud and smoke cover from the wildfires up in BC. But it was such a nice retreat from the extreme heat that we had been facing up here in Tualatin every day for the past week. And the air smelled so nice and fresh (well aside from our campfire smoke!). And I actually ended up sleeping better than I expected with so little padding between us and the ground. I woke up a lot and had to move around a ton because rocks but at least I didn't stay awake long. And in the morning it was so great to wake up together as a family out in our peaceful little clearing with the sound of the creek right nearby.
Levi was thrilled to wake up right next to us. He was like "Dada? Dada!" with a huge smile on his face.
Eric likes to copy whatever Levi is doing when they take pictures. Love my cute boys!
Saturday was a much more relaxing and beautiful day than our crazy Friday night had been. We ate our delicious overnight oats, packed things up and then spent some time down by the creek just being together as a family and skipping (or in Levi's case) throwing rocks in the creek. It was so gorgeous and peaceful, and Levi loved being free to just explore outside. So after spending the morning exploring and hanging out by the creek, we decided to head home and let Levi nap in the car on the way. And this time, he actually did :)
Our perfect little clearing. So much more private than the campground would have been anyway!
Levi is really into rocks.
Carrying around the broken, useless lantern. (thankfully Eric was able to return it and get a refund)
Levi had so much fun throwing rocks in the creek! Kept him entertained for a long time and he kept doing this little happy dance. Also isn't this one of the most lovely places ever!?!
Levi loves rocks almost as much as his grandma 😊
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