Camping with children 101

At the end of April we got our first taste of camping with children! I previously thought this was impossible with a baby until I saw a friend do it and she said he got a tent big enough for a pack n play. Adam and I fell for each other on a camping trip so we have always enjoyed camping together! We decided to take the plunge and get a big tent so we could try it out with our kiddos. We also thought a well planned ward campout would also be a good opportunity to test it out. Luckily some of our other friends with kids also braved it so we had a lot of fun hanging out with them. There was dinner, a scavenger hunt for the kids, and we had a campfire and then the young women serenaded us with campfire songs.

These boys in their maching hoodies with ears 😍😍

This pic turned out pretty cool with the light shining through. Maeve and Addie are standing to the left of the light admiring the young women performing! 

After the official program ended, a bunch of people stayed around the fire and made smores and such. We brought fancy flavored marshmallows - maple flavored and coconut flavored and they were sooooo good roasted! We also roasted starbursts which are quite delightful too.

Chowing down on their smores together in their little pink camping chairs 😍😍 - their faces kill me in this pic, obviously the flash threw them wayyy off 😂

Daddy was excited to help her and show her how it's all done! She was quite thrilled to experience it all. 😄

Don't mind Rowan's flailing legs and orange nose 😂 or my pasty skin.... Still one cute happy family camping 🤣

Once kids needed to go to bed, plenty of people started disappearing. We got our kids in bed at 9 and asleep in probably half an hour and once we left the tent again just a few people were still by the fire. We were surprised not only by how many people left and didn't even camp for the night, but called it a night early and headed to their tents! By probably 10pm it was just us out but we enjoyed the dark cold quiet night by the fire together chatting until probably 11:30pm. It was such a fun change from our norm and definitely brought back lots of camping memories.

The fire was looking so pretty 

Once we headed to bed that's when it all started getting less enjoyable. I could not sleep because I was sooooo cold! Luckily the kids did great, but until 3am I was tossing and turning just trying to warm up and nothing was working despite all my blankets. Then Rowan woke up to nurse and I wanted to die thinking about exposing my boob in the cold, much less get out of my sleeping bag to even grab him 😨😨 - it was tough stuff and in those moments I really wanted to secretly be back home! 😂 Maeve woke up too hearing Rowan and once we got him settled we moved her near us and instead of being in separate sleeping backs we opened up everything to be near each other's body heat and piled all blankets on us including hers too. Luckily then I was able to get warm enough to sleep! If only we had done that sooner... 😩 Nonetheless, the sun woke us all up at 6:30am or so, so it was a lovely 3 hours of sleep. We kinda wanted to die at the thought of getting up so we lounged for as long as the kids were happy lounging and ate poptarts (of course - Adam and I both coincidentally brought our own poptarts for breakfast when we first went camping together, so naturally that has been a tradition ever since)!

Morning faces 😍

Adam was enjoying Rowan climbing all over his face - a great wake up call 

Adam was a beast to put this huge tent together successfully almost by himself 💪

All in all, it was a pretty successful first camping trip as a little fam, but next time if it's cold I'm bringing seven million blankets. ✌️😅