Weekend Recap

This was one of those weekends where I consciously had to remind myself that "these are the days" and to try and appreciate every moment even when I felt like I may be losing my mind :) #reallife.  We really do enjoy camping, despite all of the work, and when all is said and done we are always glad we went and the good memories will overshadow everything else, or we can at least laugh about it later.  

I'm making it sound worse than it was, so let me dive in.  I took the day off on Thursday last week so I could do a few last minute errands and then pack the car.  We ended up taking the Volvo, even though we were not keen on bringing the new car since camping can be so dirty.  But we borrowed a box for the top of the car and it didn't fit on the Santa Fe.  

We picked up the kids from school around 12:30 and hit the road.  The traffic was pretty good and we arrived at Sandbanks Provincial Park around 3:00.  We got checked in and then set up the tent.  We did pretty well this year and only had to readjust it once.  We had turkey burgers for supper and while I was getting those ready, E and Q started the fire.

Suppertime.

We put Q to bed and then sat around the fire.  We let E stay up late with us and we all went to bed together.  While we sat out there we did our brackets for the World Cup, you can see the weekend games destroyed us.

We woke up Q when we all went to bed, and then he thought it was time to get up.  We did not bring the playpen, and instead brought a cot thinking that if Q could sleep on a cot at school, why would he need a crib for camping?  Well to answer that question, it meant he was free to crawl around the entire tent and although E was able to fall asleep, it meant Dave and I were awake for several hours while we waited for Q to calm down.  He wasn't crying or upset, just restless and chatty.  He eventually did go to sleep and when I woke up in the morning he was laying at my feet like a dog.  

We had a simple breakfast of cereal, muffins, and yoghurt.  Then it was time to go to the beach.  Needless to say Q was tired and quickly wanted to nap.  We had brought our umbrella stroller so he could nap at the beach thank goodness.  

E had a small rest too.

Hey, who's that good looking guy?

New bathing suit from Target.

Our site was in Outlet B and about as far away from the beach as you could get and we didn't want to drive back for lunch and lose our parking spot and our beach spot.  We had not planned for a full day at the beach and our lunch was supposed to be quesadillas.  So I decided to walk back to our site, make lunch, wrap it in tin foil and walk back.  I was doing alright until I decided to move the hot griddle with my bare hands, so I burned my fingers.  It ended up not being so bad but I felt dumb at the time. The quesadillas were good but Q didn't want to eat anything of them.  

Our friends that we usually camp with showed up mid-afternoon on Friday and were at the site next door when we came back from the beach.  We had some dinner and then got the fire going.  We had texted them that morning and asked if they could bring a playpen with them for Q, which they did, and so he easily went to bed that night and stayed asleep all night!

E making some waffle cones stuffed with chocolate, marshmallows and coconut, then wrapped in tin foil and melted over the fire.

Enjoying a "drink" by the fire.

And just in case we thought we were experienced campers, we left our cooler outside overnight and someone took the leftover turkey burger, the veggie dogs, and our cheese.  Fortunately it wasn't a big mess and everything else in the cooler was fine.   We had a big thunderstorm around 5:30 but we stayed nice and dry.

We made pancakes and turkey sausages for breakfast and then packed up for another day at the beach.  Dave is flying the kite I picked up at Dollarama, it provided a proportionate amount of fun as the price paid for it. 

For lunch on this day, one parent from each family went to the camp store and grill and picked up a hot lunch for everyone.  

This guy was a little happier with his bag of granola bites.  

After the kids went to bed, someone started setting off fireworks and woke up Q.  Like the first night, he then thought it was time to get up so we had a few hours of him being up before he went back to sleep.  Since we had the playpen this time, it wasn't as bad as the first night. 

It was Canada Day on Sunday so the boys dressed in their Canadian clothing and I tried to snap a photo with no success.  Q was on the the move. 

For lunch on this day, Dave walked to the camp store and got us the same lunch as the day before. Again, not ideal, but better than going back to our site to cook our own hot lunch like we had originally planned.  Next time we go camping we will bring a lot more options for snacks and a packed lunch, particularly if it looks like our site is far away from the beach and we will be spending all day there.

After this hot day on the beach, we got an ice cream cone before supper. 

All the kids.

Shenanigans

We brought out some sparklers and glow sticks.  Q was very excited although he didn't really understand the fire aspect of the sparklers and we had to grab it from him a couple of times.  

It was so hot that night we barely wanted to sit by the fire, but it was a lovely night.  Since it was Canada Day we made our own Spotify playlist of our Canadian favourites and kept adding to it throughout the night. We left our tent flaps open all night and had a nice breeze.  This was my view at 5:30 when I woke up to all of the birds.

We packed up all of our stuff and then went down to the beach for a few hours before going home.  Q was beat and after I made him go "swimming" to clean him up, he passed out. He slept on me for a little while before I was able to transfer him to the blanket.  He was in the shade for a bit but then the sun moved and I had to make a shelter for him.  Sweet little guy.

Some sand castle building to end the weekend.

We grabbed some McDonalds in Picton and hit the road.  

Tired eyes, sun kissed noses, and somehow still covered in sand. 

We had a pretty easy trip back and the kids were very good.  We rolled in around 5:20, I made some pasta and meatballs while Dave cleaned out the car.  We watched some Handmaid's Tale and hit the hay!