For as long as I can remember, Ben has frequently reminisced about his blissful memories of camping with his family as a child. He seems to have nothing but happy memories of his superhuman parents packing six kids and all of their gear into (and on top of) the family suburban and taking camping trips across the country. I must say that this has made me feel a wee bit intimidated about trying to camp as a family. It is not something I have ever really done comfortably. I was the young woman who was up until 2:00am crying on the night before the girls' backpacking trip because I was just . . . well, terrified.
So when the invitation came for our family to go camping over Memorial Day weekend with some church friends, let's just say that Ben was incredibly lucky that his birthday happened to fall on Memorial Day this year. Because the only thing that could overrule my fear of taking my three young children on a camping trip is my firm belief that the Birthday Boy should get to do whatever he wants on his birthday.
So, camping we went. For the first time in Iverson history.
On Saturday at noon, when we finally got on the road (only 2 hours later than planned), I asked Ben, "So, when your family went camping, were your parents super stressed and grumpy, and did everybody yell at each other pretty much the whole time you were packing the car so that by the time you left everyone was in a really bad mood?" I was completely shocked when his answer was, "Of course!"
That's when I told him that this day marked either the beginning or the end of our family's camping experiences. Now it's a good thing we had a LOT of fun once we got there. Let me show you why this kind of camping was a good choice for our debut family camping trip:
The three men got to sleep in a three-man tent . . .
while Sam and I got to sleep in this lovely little cabin!
We had bunk beds and a dry place to stash all of our stuff, and there was just barely room for Sam to sleep in the pack & play between the beds. We brought the white noise machine; we closed the door; and he slept as well as he does at home!
We went with lots of fun people. This is what I discovered: camping is a good excuse to stay up late with other adults and talk and play while the kids are all sleeping! This is hard to do at our stage of life. We laughed really hard with these people and had SO much fun!
We also stayed with people who have fancy equipment that make camping easier (thank you Mullens and Christensens) . . .
and people who enjoy cooking delicious camp food and letting us eat it (thank you Brad)!
The boys were just happy to be with friends and to be outdoors with room to explore all day long. They totally entertained themselves!
Sam is at the worst stage for camping, but he was pretty happy and stayed in his stroller a bunch.
He and Isaac were buddies!
Other times he got down, crawled around in the dirt, got super-messy, and ate lots of dirt/leaves/rocks/etc.
Ben made homemade root beer, which was a hit with our roasted hot dogs.
Look at all these boys! I do think the Great Outdoors are good for them.
We really like Tim, Becky, and Brenna :)
We stayed at Camp Joseph, which is right next to the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial in Sharon, VT. So we walked over to the chapel on the same property for Sacrament Meeting on Sunday, then came back to camp and had our own Primary.
We had open mic time for the kids: stories, scriptures, and songs
and singing time with Ben's guitar accompaniment.
We shared cupcakes for Ben's birthday!
And we sang more camp songs with the kids. My favorite was "The Farmer in the Dell."
So the question is, was this the beginning or the end of our camping experiences? Let me just say that I would definitely do THIS kind of camping again: with a cabin, with friends, at a nice campsite. Did I mention that we had hot showers and a place to plug in my blow dryer? Yes, I could do this again. Am I ready to drive coast to coast, camping along the way, with six kids in a suburban topped with a full car-top carrier? We shall see. I wouldn't want to take away from the legend of Ben's remarkable parents. For now, I'll let them have that glory.
