Making Memories

We made it back from vacation!

This year's trip was to Utah for another family reunion.  I was just a tad bit wary, for reasons other than tackling several nights in a tent.  For those of you who have been reading my blog for a couple of years, you may remember that our last attempted vacation to Utah was a less than stellar success.  (Though it was certainly memorable!)  Right off the bat, history decided to repeat itself.  My period arrived with a vengeance, my heavy day coinciding with our travel days up to Utah.

Lovely.

However, I will gratefully count my lucky stars that my déjà vu ended there.  None of the cars broke down.  We decided to break the trip up to Kaysville into two days, and we arrived quite safely in Mt. Carmel Junction on Wednesday night, the only rough part being some lengthy crying sessions by S.  That evening my mom suggested a visit to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, which turned out to be a fantastic way to wear out the kids (as well as burn some calories). 

J walking down one of the massive dunes

They tromped all over the place, and I got the fun of chasing after them.  Let me tell you, I got quite a workout!  That night at the hotel, everyone slept well-- well, everyone except S.  I finally had to bring her into bed with me, but it was only for about an hour, and then I was able to put her back in the playpen.  So not as bad as I feared (I had mental nightmares of sitting up all night trying to get an unhappy S to sleep). 

The next day's travel went smoothly as well.  We waved at Beaver, happy that we weren't going to be stuck there in the park for hours again.  In Provo we picked up some more camping gear from my aunt and then headed up for our first real challenge: setting up camp.

I'm not a camper.  I've said that, right?  I don't think I've ever set up a real campsite before.  Not when I was one of the responsible adults anyway.  Fortunately, I had Terence-- though Terence is not a camper either, he took charge and made sure our tent got up (even though we didn't find the instructions until after it was finished).  Terence is definitely one of those men who doesn't bother to read the instructions, just charges in and figures it out by trial and error, and that was definitely to our advantage in this case!

We actually bought our own tent for this foray into the not-so-primitive world of camping (we had a campsite with electricity and nearby bathrooms with showers).  Lots of people had tents to loan us, but see, I have this issue with claustrophobia and I have never really been successful at sleeping in tents.  My one year of girls' camp in a tent resulted in everyone getting jolted awake in the middle of the night by my ear-splitting, panicked cries.  We decided that our best shot of getting me to sleep in a tent was with the biggest tent we could find:

A shot of all the kids.  Yes, they are watching a movie on the laptop.  Not exactly primitive at all!

This is only half the tent.  There was plenty of room for Terence and I to sleep on a queen-sized air mattress on the other side.  I guess if you are going to have seven people in a tent, bigger is not not only better-- it's essential.

After finally getting our camp set up and making a run to Walmart for about a gazillion things it seems we had forgotten, we made our way to the welcome dinner for the family reunion.  But among the other things we had forgotten that pesky little detail called daylight savings time.  (I've been living in Arizona too long.  It baffles me now why the time needs to be changed at all, but once upon a time I used to like it. . . .)  Anyway, we were more than an hour late to dinner.  Oops!

Dinner was at a park, one with actual trees and a little stream running through it.  A stream!  And it was bearable to be outside, even though the sun wasn't down.  My kids were in heaven!  They ran around and played like crazy loons, until our evening fun was brought to a screeching halt by B vomiting all over.

Oh yes.

And no, she wasn't done.  It was an interesting night, with a sick child in a tent.  I learned that I can be lightning fast when I hear sounds of retching, even when I was deeply asleep a moment before.  I had a bag in that girl's face in a flash.

Fortunately for us, our not-so-primitive campground included a laundry room!

(I'll continue more of our vacation adventures tomorrow....)