Camping

Back in early April, some friends invited us to join them for a group camping trip over Memorial Day Weekend. The end of May seemed like a really long way off at the time, so we accepted, thinking that we had plenty of time to prepare Adelaida for camping before the trip. Before we knew it, of course, the weekend had arrived and neither Adelaida nor Dale and I were prepared!

We packed up some camping gear on Saturday morning and headed out to the campground, planning to stay one or two nights, depending on how the first night went.

The campground was HOT (actually, everything in New Mexico has been hot the past few weeks), but we had a great time camping. There were seven families total, all from our MOMS group, and the kids played together, families hiked together, groups went down to play in the creek together, and the entire campground ate and sat around the campfire together.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the trip (thanks to Shannon for several of them!).

One family in our group brought their dog -- a very well-behaved lab named Max. Adelaida loved Max and often toddled off after him. Fortunately, he didn't stray far from the campground, and he was really good around kids.


Adelina, Duncan, and Adelaida play together on the blanket.



Another shot of Adelaida, Adelina, and Duncan.


Adelaida thought that the pavers edging the campsites were just her size and loved to sit on them! Here, she convinced her daddy to sit down with her ... aren't they cute!


Adelina and Kalli became great friends on this camping trip and spent almost an hour walking up and down the campsite lane, holding hands ...


... while their older brothers (Enzo and Kieran) ran up and down the campsite lane with their trucks!


Adelaida also found a friend on this camping trip. Ria is a calm two-and-a-half-year-old girl who we don't see much of at the MOMS events -- Ria goes to school three days a week while her mom works, and Adelaida has been going to school three, four, and now five days a week while I work. Between our two work schedules, we hadn't really gotten to know Ria and her family very well prior to this trip. But the two girls latched on to each other right away and were almost inseparable! This is a picture of Adelaida and Ria, sitting on the edge of one of the campsites. It was so much fun to watch them play together on this trip!


One of the families brought a soccer ball, which Dale was immediately drawn to. He played soccer with Adelaida for a bit, which she found hilarious. I just love to hear her laugh!


Ria decided to join Adelaida's team in soccer, which didn't really give the girls an advantage, but they had fun anyway.


We did go for one short hike, up the mountain next to our campground. Adelaida rode in the backpack, of course.


This is a view from our hiking destination, looking out over the campground (near the river).


Turning counter-clockwise 90 degrees showed us another beautiful view.


We made it through the trip with only two mildly scraped knees. Amazingly, Adelaida didn't cry at all when she fell!


In planning this camping trip, we knew that Adelaida doesn't sleep well in the same room with us, so thought we'd put her to sleep in the back of the car while we were in the tent. We'd leave the windows cracked so we could hear her, and we'd all sleep better. That great idea was foiled when we arrived at the campground and realized the car parking spots were really far away from the tents. So, we all slept in the tent together, and didn't have quite enough sleeping bags or blankets for all three of us. It got kind of cold at night, and we ended up with Adelaida sleeping on my chest, sharing the sleeping bag with me. Not ideal, but we did get some sleep. Unfortunately, we didn't get quite enough sleep that night, so left the next day, with plans to go camping again this summer.