Mother Daughter Campout

I am sure people think I am crazy to take a one year old camping, but it was actually a lot of fun. Every year our stake hosts a mother-daugther camp out at the beginning of September. Last year I had a few people say I should take Emma, but since she was only 6 six weeks old, I opted out. But this year I decided to borrow a tent, and a sleeping bag, make foil dinners, and bring Emma along and have fun with a bunch of other women in the ward. The campsite is about 2 hours away from San Antonio and was just beautiful. I almost forgot I was in Texas, there were so many trees and all of these hills, one even looked like a mountain (not quite, but we are talking Texas.) To add to the pretty trees, you are also right next to the Frio river (the coldest river in Texas- but once again we are in southern TX, so it felt great!)

On Friday we loaded up our stuff around 4 and got to the campsite around 6, just in time to set up tents, and get a fire going to heat our foil dinners. By the time we were done with the set up it was after 8pm and Emma was getting sleepy. Luckily she was a trooper and had a great time walking over to all of the camp fires she could find and wanting to touch those great looking flames; thankfully, I was able to stop her so we never had to race her to a hospital for third degree burns. Other than keeping me moving, I guess the one good thing about Emma experimenting with fire is she was given the youngest camper and pyro award. :) There are a couple of women in the ward who really get into doing a "campfire program" and that is where she got her award. I was named the "first to be ready" award. Anyway, it was fun.

Well, after our campfire and a few smores I put Emma to bed around 9:30pm, and under the circumstances, with lots of new and loud noises she slept pretty good. She did wake up scared around 11:30pm, so it took a while to calm her down, but once I did she didn't wake up till around 7:45am. At least one of us slept well. For some reason I forgot how uncomfortable it is to sleep on a hard ground. And once again we are talking Texas so it stayed in the upper 80's most of the night, with at least 80% humidity. Let's just say that is not what I am use to when I camp. Camping in Germany was a different story, by the time it got dark it was cold and you were wearing socks and a sweatshirt to bed. Considering the hot night, no wonder it felt so good to swim in the Frio River the next morning.

Saturday was certainly the highlight of the trip. The Stake Presidency made us a delicious breakfast of sausage, french toast, hash browns, and juice. After that we all got our swimsuits on and headed to the river. Since Emma is so small, and we had a lot of rain making the river pretty fast, we stayed in little streams. She had a blast!! After a couple hours there, we had lunch, packed up, and headed home with extremely tired and dirty children.

While I had to do a lot of running around and watching Emma, it was still a lot of fun to be with her. I look forward to being able to take her in the next few years, as she gets older and is able to understand more things. I think she is going to learn to love the outdoors. Oh the joy of being a mom, I love it!!!!