We went camping this weekend to Stone Mountain State Park.The Friday part of our trip was the worst camping experience ever, and I do mean ever, for me, and I have camped A LOT...but Saturday and Sunday made up for it. On Friday we got to camp just as it started pouring, which we knew was supposed to go on all night. The plan had been  to get to camp an hour before the rain started...plan didn't happen... which had as much to do with me as anyone else. Getting to camp included having an uncovered truck bed with all our stuff getting rained on. Our tarp at home had been used as a rain cover on rabbit cages and was muddy, rusty wet and gross. So the hope was to find somewhere  to buy a tarp on the way. Instead we sat in a stupid McDonalds drive thru with our stuff getting rained on while they made us wait for our brinner. You can order breakfast anytime now, it just takes 4 times as long to get your food...and they messed our order up so Luke and I basically had a couple of pancakes to share. Just down the road a bit we found a place to get a tarp. As the kids and I are sitting in the truck the rain gets harder and Grace has a BRILLIANT idea. Why don't we get all the stuff we can and bring it into the cab? So she and I climbed out and loaded the kids in the back seat full of pillows , sleeping bags and clothes. They seriously couldn't move. But we had mostly dry sleeping bags, pillows and pjs that night!

We set up camp in pouring, and I do mean pouring, rain. It was crazy. And I was grouchy. Kids stayed mostly dry and helped a ton. Jason and I got drenched. The tent was wet because we had to put it up first and then the rain fly. But the kids dried off the floor with puppy pads I threw in at the last minute not really knowing why. Thank you to whomever up in heaven intervened with the puppy pads so I did not have a stroke that night. Luckily we have a big ass tent. (Remember how mad I was when Jason came home with it? It was SOOOO much more tent then we needed???) We all slept in the middle and stayed dry. Wet clothes dripped on to yet another puppy pad and the leaks were all on the outside walls.  It is a great tent, but I think anything leaks in that kind of rain and wind.

Saturday was beautiful. So calm and not muddy. There is actually dirt, not muddy clay, there and it was fine the next day. We hiked, ate awesome food cooked by Jason as usual and just enjoyed each other. I did not take a single picture. I did not bring the camera because I thought I would just use my phone. But my battery drained and it would only charge with the truck on, so I let it be. It was worth it to not be able to be contacted :) Jason's phone didn't even have coverage! Luke went to a ranger program about stream aquatics. Turned out he and Jason were the only ones there so Luke got a biologist all to himself for an hour. He LOVED it, Jason said she did too. It is fun to teach enthusiastic students. They found all sorts of things in the stream that I didn't know lived there. All the other kids were sad they didn't go when Luke came back telling them how fun it was.

As we were hiking on Sunday Sophie said that these woods would have made a good place to film the Hunger Games. I laughed and told her they did film the Hunger Games there! At least the first one. On that hike we also saw a lady hiking (this was not far, like 1 mile round trip to the waterfall) holding her fluffy white rabbit in a basket under her arm. No joke. It was a little crazy.

I think if we could always hike in 65 degree weather with a light breeze my kids would love hiking as much as Jason and I do. It was fun and we laughed and played as a family. The kids have this game where they get in their mummy bags, stand up, head in too, and have worm wars. They flop and wriggle and fall all over each other and try to pin people down. It was super funny. And we were probably way too loud for our neighbors, but they had kids too, just not as many or the volume of ours. So awesome dad saved the camping trip and all was well.