I'm glad to be back.

Camping. It seemed so easy when I was a kid. I thought it was easy to just pick up and go, spur of the moment-and have a ton of fun. Little did I know the preparation, planning and money that are actually involved! I have years, and years of camping under my belt-all kinds of situations and variables thought out, but I still wasn't as prepared as I could have been for this past weekend.

Nick with cousin "Speedy". Nathan in background.

We got there Friday, and I quickly set up the campsite, since my hubby had never been camping in his entire life. I know! I got everything set up pretty fast, then I had to cook dinner, since apparently cooking hot dogs on a fire grill is too complicated for my man. (The second night he tried to do it, put lighter fluid on the coals while he was cooking the hot dogs, and asked if you can still eat them with it on them. We threw all 6 of them away. Then I took over the cooking, and managed to drop 2 hot dogs into the dirt. I also washed them, and put them back on the plate. What? We were camping, and nobody knew-shhhh!) Then we visited family for a while. We were all pretty sleepy, so we thought we'd put the kids to bed early since it was dark, and they had been in the car for a while. We figured they would be out in no time. We were so wrong! We laid in with them for almost 2 hours, trying to get them to sleep. By the time they all did finally pass out, everyone else had gone to bed.

"Oh, well, " we thought. "we'll hang out, and play games tomorrow."

Wrong again. I woke up around 1 am to a tap, tap, tap on the tent. I was in a half sleep stupor, but awake enough to know I was hearing rain. "Oh, crap!" I thought, "All the chairs are out there!" But since I wasn't dressed, I did the next logical thing-apart from actually getting up and moving the chairs. I prayed.

"Please let this rain stop, so the chairs don't get wet. Please let it stop so we can have fun with everyone tomorrow, and have a dry place to sit."

And it did. I was so proud of myself, for my apparently strong connection with the Man Upstairs. So strong in fact that it stopped raining while I was saying it! I was so happy, and I dozed back off to sleep. But, because we all know that pride is one of the 7 deadly sins-I really should have known better.....I should have known that by stopping, it was really only building itself up for the downpour it was about to unleash on us!

Poor sister in law (in purple), and cousins sitting around the fire cooking in the rain, trying hard to warm up. (You can't see it, but there was a huge tarp hanging-that was purchased in the afternoon, so that cooking would be possible!)

I woke up around 2 to TAP, TAP, TAP!! This time, I hit Alan to wake him up, and inform him that it was raining. Then I jumped up, threw clothes on and ran out of the tent barefoot to throw the now soaking wet chairs in the car. Miles' baby seat was out there too, and seemed to take the brunt of the water. Grr! I wrapped that up in a towel, to hopefully soak up some of the water before putting that in too. I grabbed the charcoal that was hanging out in the open, and set that in a spot next to our tent that was miraculously still dry.

2 of My favorites! My niece, Lisa and her Hubby Calvin. (I am younger than them, it's a long story, but a wonderful, loving family!)

Then I got to go in and try to warm up. The cousins were all running around too, but unfortunately for some of them, it was because their tents had flooded, and the rain was getting their blankets wet. We, luckily enough, had chosen a perfect spot under 2 huge trees, so we were just getting the tree cast-off rain. Our tent was huge-nice! But the sides were mesh-not so nice. We had a rain cover for it, but that didn't keep the damp air out. We were dry-ish. Our blankets were damp from the humidity in the air, but we escaped pretty much unharmed. We were not prepared in clothes though. We were expecting warm to hot weather-not rain, so we had brought a few pairs of pants, but we only brought sweaters. Sweaters that soak up the rain like a sponge. I felt so bad, because the kids kept coming up and asking to change, but we had nothing dry for them to change into. I was ringing out their sweaters, and holding them over fires, even laying them directly onto the rock stoves at a few points to get them warmed up enough for them to continue wearing.

Nathan showing off his "Not-very-effective-but-highly-adorable" rain gear.

Oh, out of order, but I thought it was cute-Nick woke up wanting to go to the falls and the beach to go swimming. He had been looking forward to it the whole day before-but when he woke up, he seemed deep in thought for a second, then a look of utter disgust came over his face, and his first words were "PLEASE tell me it's not raining!" When informed that yes, it was really raining, he flopped back into his pillow dramatically, "DANG IT!"

They were already soaked, I don't know why I didn't just let them go in. You can't see the rain drops in the water, but they are there.

We hung out in the car, with the heater running and movies playing. A few times there was 9 or 10 people in, trying to warm up.  About half way through the day, we packed the kids up and took them to the beach. It rained the whole time, but it was still fun.

Nick, Nathan, and Ben in front of the McArthur Burney Falls.

Then we went to the Falls, with some cousins. Later on, we went fishing when there was a small break in the rain. It lasted about 15 or so minutes, and started again. Poor Miles was stuck in the tent so much this trip because the ground was so muddy. It continued to rain pretty much until we went to bed. Then we had to get up early and pack up. Thank you cousin Dave, and sons for helping to take the tent down! Dave tried to get Alan to help take the tent down, but he kept messing up. After about a minute or so, Dave told his son to take over doing it, and told Alan to stick to turning wrenches. We all laughed pretty hard. Dave had asked me earlier why I was the one setting the tent up, and not Alan. I told him Alan had never camped, I had, so Alan was holding Miles. He scoffed and made fun of Alan a little bit, but I think he saw in the end that some things just aren't worth it!

Ben catches a fish with the help of Dave, and crew.

It was a lot of fun seeing the family that we haven't seen in 3 or so years, rain and all. I wish I got pictures of them, I only have pictures of a few, since I couldn't take many pictures in the rain. I would love to do this again, but if the Weather Channel gets it this wrong again, I swear, I might sue. 85 degrees on Saturday, indeed!! Jerks.

Nick and Nathan saying a sad goodbye to one of their favorite cousins for the weekend. Nathan was attached to him at the hip.

I love this picture of Lisa's daughter, and little Jada.

My sister in law, Dolores, and my cousin Steffan.

Lisa, her daughter, and son.