Johansen Family: Camping 101

Camping 101
1. Do not camp with small children
2. Particularly do not camp with small children who experience night terrors
3. If you do camp with said children and they do experience night terrors, do not be surprised when your fellow campers on the surrounding camp sites pack up the next day and leave while giving you dirty looks.
4. Dirt gets EVERYWHERE
5. Despite all of the above, you and your children will have a good time, even the child who is addicted to video games.

We ventured out camping over the weekend to Heyburn State Park, on the south side of Coeur d'Alene, with the Prizemans. Todd and Sandra are more seasoned campers than Brian and I. I last camped in college and Brian last camped in his adolescence, so we had to rely on them for guidance. Setting up tents went well, cooking was great (camping food is always good to me), bugs were significantly less than Texas camping, and the weather was perfect (sunny and in the 80s). If there were no kids with us, it would have been a perfect adult camping weekend. So the kids loved the camping and loved all of the outdoor activities. Bug hunting and spider catching was a popular sport, as was playing in the water faucet. Thankfully only a handful of people ever ventured over to use the common faucet. Maybe they were turned off by the kid created mud pit or the soggy Lucky Charms and goldfish crackers.

As for the not pleasant aspects, my one hour of sleep the first night. Myann had night terrors which resulted in her beating up Shane during the night. So then I moved Shane to my place by Brian and moved me by Myann. Not an easy task in the dark. Then Myann awoke again screaming and it took me a while to calm her. Not longer after Anders woke up. I brought him to sleep with me, then Myann noticed and kept hitting him. So I woke Brian up, how he was sleeping is beyond me, because no surrounding tents were likely sleeping with our noise level. I gave him Anders and got Myann back to sleep. Then an hour later Anders came crawling over to me and wanted to be up for the morning, that was at 5am. So my day began with one hour of sleep. To make matters worse, I could not get the fire started, so no hot water, it was freezing cold and I NEEDED coffee. Then I had to keep a 22 month old quiet for 2 hours while everyone else slept and I was miserable and needing coffee - did I mention that already. I immediately began fantasizing about packing up and getting home to sleep in my own bed. As the day continued on and I had a one hour power nap, I felt human and we stuck it out another night. Honestly I did it because Brian said he did not want us to be quitters. I could have cared less about being a quitter at that point, but we stayed and the next night went much better. By the way, the nearest neighboring tent packed up and left. Maybe coincidence, but I am pretty sure they left because of us and their inevitable lack of sleep the night before. So we adjusted sleep arrangements, meaning I slept with Myann so I could endure the wrath of her night terrors. She only had 2 and the second lasted the longest, but I got her calmed down before she woke up anyone else in the tent.

The only other snafu was our paddle boat rentals. Todd and Sandra took the boys and Bree. Brian and I took Myann and Anders. Not longer after leaving the dock, we began taking on water. Yes, our paddle boat was filling up and we had two children in our laps as we tried to paddle. We were not too concerned until Todd pointed out that we had become completely lopsided. So we gave them Myann, yes in their 4 man paddle boat, they had 6 (We have kind friends). And we paddled back to the dock. I think that is the end of our paddle boat days.

Camp fire fun - of course smores and glow stick sword fighting