Camping!

We went camping last week as a family for the first time ever. Tim and I went once when Lane was six months old and Tim and the kids went once before Reed was born, but we've never gone all together. Now, we're not new to camping out -- we both went many times as children with our families. In fact, that was usually the summer vacation with my parents. We'd go to various state parks and camp, sometimes in a tent, sometimes in a screened shelter. I have many good memories of those times, which is why we decided to go where we did.

We went to Huntsville State Park, one of the parks I went to when I was 12 years old. It's part of the Sam Houston National Forest in East Texas and is just a beautiful place. There are trees everywhere. Some people thought we were crazy to go camping in Texas in June. We were some of those people. The only bad thing I could see about it ahead of time was that I was sure it was going to be so hot, but hey, we were only staying two nights. This is the view from our campsite.

It was not hot in the least. The last day we were there, it got up to 88 degrees, but there are so many trees, that our campsite was quite shady. It was just beautiful and we were right on the lake. We saw bluejays and woodpeckers and there were squirrels everywhere that were not in the least bit shy. They would come within a foot or two of you -- I guess they're used to being fed!

We stayed in a screened shelter -- you have four walls and a roof and the windows are screened in, but that's all the comforts of home you have. We slept on air mattresses inside and had a concrete table inside to eat at, but mostly we ate at the picnic table outside.

Correction: four of us slept on air mattresses inside. The artist formerly known as Taco Boy, shall henceforth be known as Nature Boy. He would have nothing to do with sleeping inside and hauled his air mattress and sleeping bag out on the grass where he could see the stars. He's proud to report he was not eaten alive by mosquitos nor bothered by raccoons.

Maren tired quickly of walking down the road to change clothes to go swimming or of having to take her bathing suit with her in order to change at the bathhouse. She developed a new method of changing in our shelter. Yes, that's her zipped-up sleeping bag.

We swam in the mornings and evenings, cooked out on the grill, played games at night and read a lot. We made mud pies on the shore of the lake (or mud "monsters"). We tried our hand at fishing and found out we're not very talented at making a campfire without some assistance from a firestarter log.

On the way home, we stopped at the Sam Houston Visitor's Center to see the ENORMOUS statue of Sam Houston. You can't miss it passing through town. Lane and Maren were very interested in it as Lane is a history buff and Maren just took Texas History in 7th grade this year.

It was very relaxing and we'll be going back there again. We're thinking of making it an end-of-school tradition!