Campy

Even after a five day Labor Day weekend (ahhh), I still didn't find the time to clean my house, send off many baby gifts and cards and late birthday presents and photos of my kids, and update the blog. Now that another crazy (though short) week of work is behind me, I am starting to wonder if things are ever going to settle down. And it is this feeling of rushed, stressed, kid-nagging, husband-alienating, work-struggling excess that has me longing for a simpler time, when dishes were washed in a dishpan, when strong women cooked noodle hotdish in the open air, when small children were held on "vault toilets" so as not to be lost forever, when neighbors could attempt to fall asleep while listening to their other neighbors swap loud stories around the fire, just a few feet away, late, late into the night.

So, really, this simple time was last week, and it was pretty fun. The camping out part was really fantastic. The girls got muddy, our campsite was next to a little brook (which Naomi kept delightedly referring to as a waterfall), there was much stick and rock and leaf and mud imaginary play, we saw a little cute mouse scurrying around, and the meals I planned worked out just fine (though, if you know how to make toast whilst camping, please leave a comment...). The sleeping part was pretty disastrous. The campground was in the flight path of Seatac airport, and all the landing planes seemed to be about a hundred feet overhead, every ten minutes. The neighbors were a big group, a family reunion, maybe? who despite having claimed five or six of the campsites in the area had to make their fire twenty feet from our tent, sit around it and make chat late into the night (who can blame them, right?), and feed it with new logs which they insisted on chopping with an axe at 11 pm. After they had awakened Muriel (rats!), and she could absolutely not get back to sleep because of the chopping sounds and the light and shadows dancing on the tent wall, I was forced to morph into a person I swore I would never be, the person who totally kills someone else's fun by claiming their right to quiet hours with the excuse "We have little ones who are having trouble sleeping." Who says "we have little ones"...?! Not me! But, yeah, me now.

I tried to avoid saying anything about the noise, because I knew my kids would be up EARLY and there would be no shushing them. Sure enough! We didn't have a clock handy, but we got up when they did, made some leisurely breakfast, packed up our tent, chatted with the sweet apologetic campfire gang from next door, got everything into the car, and drove down the way to the beach park, where we discovered that it was all of 8:30. So, yeah, I told them to be quiet and then still woke them up way earlier than any camper should be required. Sorry! We gave them our firewood.

Anyway, camping pictures- let's see how many the internet lets me upload before I doze off...