First Camping trip with the Girls

So we haven't been camping since the girls were born and we decided to give it a shot for Father's Day weekend!

We stayed in Patapsco Valley State Park, which was our first time, which is kind of funny since it is only a 25-minute drive from our house. It is between Baltimore and DC. It is a beautiful park, and somewhat comical that it was a mere 5-minute excursion to a Starbucks (along with a host of other suburban supermarts) from our campsite. But lo and behold, while in our lovely site, you barely noticed that these things existed. We didn't even hear traffic, just the occasional train

.

We arrived late (after 8) on Friday evening and were able to get the tent up and fire going before

it got dark. All was going smoothly until we tried to get the girls to sleep. We only have one pack n' play so we figured that one of the girls would just sleep on a make-shift number next to us. It was not as easy as I had hoped and Dave ended up having to drive the girls around the campground loop a few times until they fell asleep. This is something that I have often heard of parents doing to get their little one asleep, and we haven't had to use this method until now! We had them in their car seats for a while and then transferred them to their sleeping quarters. Lucy only woke up once the first night; Stella was up several times. Then, thanks to the lack of blackout shades, she was wide-eyed and bushy-tailed

between 5AM and 7AM

(Dave and I were definitely not ready to be up yet considered our campfire was still burning at 2AM). Lucy woke up to eat at 7AM and that's when we decided we were going to have to relocate the girls back to their car seats and create some make-shift sun shades. This worked and they slept until 9AM.

I should also mention that we had a HUGE thunderstorm that started around 4AM with pouring rain and loud loud thunder (the girls surprisingly did NOT wake up during this). And we are happy to report that our tent continues to be fabulously waterproof!!

Saturday morning we drank homemade cold-press coffee and made a trip into suburbo for some hot breakfast sandwiches. We took a hike on the Ol Ranger trail through the Paw Paw trees. It

was beautiful and very shaded; it was fairly hilly terrain and we definitely got a work out dodging

rocks and roots, and climbing up and down- all with a baby attached to each one of us! The girls

still fit in their carriers (Baby Bjorn and a Fisher Price number) so we had them facing outward on the trek. I think its about time we look for the backpack kind however; dangling toes and strong legs tend to hit their parents in uncomfortable places!

We visited H Mart (which is an Asian specialty grocery store) to find food for dinner. From the selection of cow tongue, rabbit, and pigs feet- we ended up selecting a nice healthy portion of Halibut. We wrapped it in tin foil on the fire. One was marinated in a garlic/italian dressing for an hour and then other we cooked with butter and a lemon/ pepper/ salt mixture. Both of them turned out quite nice- the marinated one a bit better.

Shortly after dinner, I heard some rustling by the picnic table. Naturally I had to have Dave

check it out, since I was not going head-on with whatever it was.... We thought it was probably a squirrel, but it ended up being a big ol' raccoon digging in our trash that we had just lying around (oops). Fortunately, he wobbled out of there as soon as Dave shone the flashlight on his masked face.

Bed time, take two. This time Lucy was the non-sleeper. They had both fallen asleep in their car seats (it seemed to work well because we could rock them to sleep) .We couldn't let them cry it out in their beds because we had a couple new neighbors on both sides and the sound traveled a little too well. Lucy however, did not stay asleep- she was awake almost every hour. Then around 7AM Dave took her for a ride in the car so I could get a bit of sleep.

We left on Sunday after our morning fire.

After all was said and done, we had a good time, even though we were both quite sleep-deprived (a bit more than normal!). Since it was now Father's Day I knew who was going to get to take the nap when we got home:)