World of the Wilsons: Our First Family Camping Trip

My poor neglected blog...I've been so busy lately that all I've managed to do with the blog is to load pictures for posts. My mom asked me two weekends ago if I was ever going to update it and I promised I would. I didn't realize that it would take me two weeks just to keep that promise! I'm going to try to do a better job, I promise! Now on to all the events that have been happening in our lives lately...

Over Columbus Day weekend, our little family went on our first camping trip together. We had been talking about doing this for a long time and the weather finally cooperated so we could go!

Eli was SUPER EXCITED about going on his first camping trip. We went to the store before we went and he got to pick out a new Transformers sleeping bag, everything we needed to make s'mores, and much more stuff. We loaded up Josh's truck and headed to our campsite.

The first thing we did was collect firewood so we could build a fire. Josh and I put our survival skills to the test and pretty soon we had a great fire going.

Eli had fun just being a boy. He chopped branches off of trees, swung on vines, threw sticks and pinecones into the fire, and got dirty. It was great!

All that playing made him very hungry so we took a break from collecting firewood and roasted some hot dogs. They were SO GOOD!

It was so nice to enjoy nature. It was so peaceful and quiet. I loved seeing all the trees around us and took lots of pictures of them!

Eli brought his binoculars that Uncle Dave and Aunt Lisa gave him so he and Josh could look for birds.

We didn't see very many birds, but I did almost run into this spiderweb. EEK! Once I gained my composure and calmed down, I snapped a picture of the arachnid that made me turn into a ninja :)

After our exciting nature walk, we came back to the campsite because it was time to make s'mores! Yummy!! Eli wasn't super fond of getting his hands sticky from the melted marshmallow, so after this picture he opted for just eating the marshmallows by themselves.

I ,on the other hand, gobbled up two or three of the s'mores

(minus the chocolate because I'm not a big fan).

The weather started getting cooler so we kept close to the fire the rest of the night talking to each other and listening to the radio. It was so much fun being together!

Daddy and Eli came up with a new special handshake. They did it

over and over about 10 times. Eli LOVED it!

Josh went for another round of s'mores and decided to do tricks with the marshmallow this time.

If banking doesn't work out, he could always join the circus and be a fire eater.

The sun started to go down and we took a few more pictures before going to bed. Eli played his heart out and started to fall asleep in his camping chair by the fire. I saw his head nod a few times and asked him if he wanted to crawl in my lap. He did and as soon as his head hit my chest he was out!

We all slept really well in our little tent all snuggled up in our sleeping bags. At one point in the night, Eli got hot and then later on he got cold. Other than him waking up to tell me that he was cold, he did really well! We woke up early the next morning and started working on our fire again. The embers were still really hot so it didn't take long or us to get it going again. Josh made some campfire coffee for us and it was actually better than I expected!

We kept hearing woodpeckers nearby and when Eli asked what a woodpecker was Josh gave him a hands-on lesson. He and Eli pretended to be woodpeckers for awhile.

After his lesson on woodpeckers, they got out their binoculars again to look for birds.

He liked Daddy's better than his.

Pretty soon it was time to pack up our things to go. We stopped by the campground office to pay for our one of night "roughing it" and while we were there Eli spotted the playground. We let him play for a little bit and went for a walk on the pier before finally heading home.