Damp Camping Fun

This weekend we went on our annual camping trip with our homeschooling friends.  It was considerably wetter than any other year we've gone, so that made things a little bit more interesting, but we still had a grand time!

 Fortunately we knew the forecast going into the weekend, so we were somewhat prepared.  We dug up this "shade tent" from the recesses of our garage (I'm not sure we've ever even used it before?), and we set it up over the picnic table.  It was a little crowded back there, which caused me to ponder how we might better set things up next year (I've got big plans . . .), but it did help keep things a bit drier.  I don't think it rained Friday at all, but Saturday it rained off and on pretty much the whole day.  We even canceled out hike to the falls because of it!  Fortunately it was nice in the evening, and so we were still able to have our taco bar potluck, which was fun.  Sunday we still had our church service (it sprinkled a time or two, but really we hardly got wet), and then 2 groups hiked up to the falls two different times.  We had a dry spell Sunday afternoon, and so we gambled and left the tents up, hoping they would dry out before we put them away.  We lost that bet, however, as it started raining pretty solidly, and we ended up taking the tents down in a rush, and stuffing everything in the back of the 2 minivans as quickly as possible (also as unorganized as possible, lol).  That meant we got to put up the tents this morning in our front yard to dry them out, along with the tarps, camp chairs, sleeping pads, etc.  Not quite as much fun as setting up at the campsite!

 The kids still had fun.  Along with our usual construction toys, they added in a waterfront! Water and dirt--how can any kid be happier?!

 One of the older girls helped our girls make these leaf crowns, which they thought were pretty fantastic.

 Nathan got to use his hammock a bit on Friday, since it wasn't rainy.  Verity thought it was nice too!

 Nathan and Luke had their work cut out for them, keeping a fire going with all the rain and general dampness.  They persevered, however, and they also split a ton of wood from this big round section that Bob and Anna rolled down to our campsite from the entrance to our loop.

 Verity thought she owned the place, of course, and she wandered happily around to the other campsites, visiting.  She did take a wonderful nap Saturday afternoon.  This year she slept in our "toddler travel bed" instead of a pack-n-play, marking the first time since Nathan was born that we have camped without a pack-n-play.  She thought she was pretty big stuff, with her Winnie-the-Pooh sleeping bag!

The funnest part was that this year the L's came too.  We've been camping with them since Nathan was 8 weeks old, and Elizabeth was pregnant with Amanda, back in Colorado!  Now here we re al20 years later!

Here is a picture of us from a camping trip to Molly Gulch, I believe, back in 1998.  Obviously we haven't changed at all!  Ed is cooking on their Coleman camp stove that we shared during all those camping trips.  When we started going on this camping trip 4 years ago, we just borrowed theirs!  With them coming this year as well, we finally had to bite the bullet and buy our own camp stove.  We bought the exact same Coleman camp stove.  We figured after trying it out for 20 years, we were finally ready to commit, lol.  It worked great for us!

We did have some unusual medical issues this trip.  Two weeks ago, Nathan had a really sore throat and just wasn't feeling well.  Eventually Grace and Jonathan did as well, with the added bonus of a nice rash all over their bodies.  I took them in to the doctor on Thursday, May 18, before we went to WSS, and no surprise there, they all had strep throat (scarlet fever for Grace and Jonathan).  Nathan got penicillin, Jonathan got amoxicillin, but I asked for Grace to have something different, since she had massive hives the last time she had amoxicillin, so she got a Z-pack.  Well, Friday morning, as we were packing up to leave, Jonathan showed me what looked like bug bites all over his arms.  We couldn't figure out when he would have been bitten, but I gave him some benedryl. He and the older boys came later than the rest of us did, and as they were driving, he texted to say he looked like he had chicken pox!  As we watched this rash spread all over his body, it struck me--he's probably having a reaction to the amoxicillin, just like Grace (and Drew and Verity)!  So he didn't take any more pills, and the rash seemed like it was starting to go away--although it is back now, so I'm going to take him back in tomorrow.  Crazy!

The other medical issue was Drew's finger.  When he was doing his dishwasher job (unloading the silverware) last Monday, the day after we got home from WSS, I was startled to see what looked like a blister at the top of his right pointer finger!  I asked him what had happened, but he kept saying he didn't know.  It looked a little like the blister you would get after a burn, so I asked him if he had touched the hot metal when he was roasting marshmallows on Saturday night.  He looked clueless and said he didn't know.  He certainly never complained at all at WSS or any other time about getting his finger burned or hurt in any way, so I filed it away as a mystery and proceeded to literally never think about it again.

Until we got up to camping on Friday.  He went potty, and I was lifting him up to wash his hands, since he couldn't reach.  I noticed that his finger was swollen, tight, and red all the way down to the second joint of his finger!  What in the world?!  It looked still like the blister you might get after a burn, but now it was much huger than it had been, and it looked terrible.  But he had never complained about it once during the whole week!  If I hadn't happened to notice it on Monday, I would never have even know when it started (well, as close as I could know, anyway, since Drew himself could give no clues)!  We showed it to all our friends, and one friend offered some essential oils she had brought with her.  We put meleleuca and oregano on it, which really stung, and THEN Drew complained and cried about it!  He actually cried out in the middle of the night a few times too.  But in the morning, the blister had split down the middle, so we thought that was a good sign.  We put antibiotic ointment on it and a bandaid.  Sunday the bandaid was off, but the finger still looked pretty awful.  Now that we're home, we've been soaking it, but obviously there is still infection in there.  We can't figure out what happened, but we're wondering if it wasn't some kind of bite or something--something he wouldn't have felt.  There is no way it was a burn, because those throb, and he would definitely have cried and let us know!  He fussed enough with the oils on it!  So I'm planning on taking him in tomorrow as well.  Hopefully I can get 2 appointments!