We decided to spend our three-day weekend camping with family and friends. My sister reserved a group campsite at Anderson Ranch which could house up to 100 people. We each invited some of our friends and ended up with a really fun group. Our friends Paul and Lindsay and their two boys Tucker and Owen came up Friday night. Hernan, Alejandra and their three kids (Hernan, Bruno, Gisele) camped on Saturday night only. Scott and Laura and their ten-month old baby Aiden as well as my parents and Anna’s friend Kelly were there the entire weekend. Oh and Derik’s business partner, Dave came up on Saturday. Anna and Derik also had some of their other friends in an adjacent site on the compound but we didn’t really hang out with them much.
I wasn’t aware that we were deficient in family camping gear until packages started arriving at our house last week. Apparently Andy had deemed our gear stash as lacking for a family and started purchasing some nice additions to the camping gear for the weekend and future car camping adventures. He figured that we won’t be doing a lot of backpacking for a few years so we might as well invest in car camping equipment. He bought a new family tent which was tall enough that I can stand up in, a “kitchen” from REI, a Coleman stove, an LED lantern and some camping pots and pans. They did make camping more comfortable.
We drove up to Anderson Ranch on Friday afternoon. It was nice that it was less than a two-hour drive. Driving has taken on a whole new dimension where we never know when Belén will start crying, especially when we are driving through mountains where the elevation changes hurt her ears. I think the maximum I would want to drive with her right now is about three hours.
Once at our camp site, I worked on getting Belén happy after the ride while Andy set up our tent and the camp kitchen and other gear. We brought a lot of stuff! Our new tent is actually large enough that we could place the pack-and-play in it so Belén essentially still had a crib to sleep in. The size of her pack-and-play did, however prevent us from using the cots we had borrowed from Erin, but that was not a big deal as we had her paco pads as well, which are plush!
After everything was set up it was close to dinner time. I made up a batch of Cowboy Caviar to be served with chips that hit the spot. Derik had prepped a large batch of gourmet pork and beans. We supplied a fruit salad and Scott prepared a pineapple cake. When I originally talked with Derik and Anna about coordinating meals, Derik thought that it would be too hard to prepare a dish for more than eight people and therefore we didn’t include everyone in the meal planning. We now know that those Dutch Oven recipes easily accommodate more people and on future trips we will plan the meals with everyone who wants to be a part of it. A storm hit as we were making dinner so the large campsite with family reunion-style shelter proved useful. We moved the Dutch Ovens and meal prep under the shelter and ended up eating there as well. With the onset of the storm, we ended up eating later and did not have a lot of energy to stay up late around the campfire. Most people retired to their tents before 10:30. The theme was that one parent would go “get the kid(s) to bed” and then never come back themselves.
I normally hate the nighttime when camping. In short, I freak myself out thinking I hear every sort of wild animal inches from our tent. My strategy years past has been to have a few alcoholic beverages before bed so I essentially pass out and sleep hard through the night without waking up and getting scared. Having Belén there, I knew I was going to have to wake up in the night to feed her but it turns out I didn’t freak myself out when I was awake. Maybe it was the awesome skylight in the new tent or the fact that Andy was up with me or because I was more concerned about Belén than myself, but I was never scared. Both nights camping Belén woke up to feed around 1:30 am and then again around 5, when it was getting light out. The first night she cried when we changed her diaper because it was cold in the tent and her bare bum and legs were exposed. We tried to keep her as quiet as possible to not wake our fellow campers with lightning fast diaper changes. The second night we figured out how to keep her warmer in the sleeping bag while we changed her and she didn’t cry at all. She was a trooper the entire trip and it was a lot of fun having her there with us camping. I would say the most difficult thing was breastfeeding her in the tent. I never realized how much I rely on being in a chair or couch for my back support when I feed her. The easiest way to breastfeed her out in the wilderness was standing up which is something I only resort to at home if she is really fussy and needs to be jiggled OR if I need to be walking around the house for some reason. After I complained about how difficult it was to feed her, Andy found a small chair that sits on the ground and that made a huge difference in the middle of the night.
I was a little traumatized on the second night when I finished feeding her and was getting ready to put her back in her “crib”, I noticed something dark near her mouth. The light was very poor so I asked Andy to turn on the lantern. He very groggily agreed to do so. With more light, I could clearly see that there was something dark near the corner of her mouth. As I examined it more closely, I realized that it was an ant that had crawled up to get a taste of the sweet breast milk. I was utterly disgusted as I ripped the ant off of her precious face and smooshed it to its demise. My brain immediately started processing what other bugs could be crawling through her mouth without me knowing. Andy’s response, “it’s a little protein.”
My mom and a few others were concerned that Belén would get too cold at night. Each time we woke up, we reevaluated the temperature and adjusted her clothing accordingly. At first it was pretty warm in the tent so she just had on her jammies. Then, when I came to bed, I added a fleece swaddle blanket. At the 5 am feeding, I added another blanket on top of that as it was pretty chilly. She wore a hat the entire night and never seemed bothered by the temperature. I have a feeling she was pretty toasty.
Beléns new tongue game
Saturday morning we made my favorite breakfast, campers stew, for the crew. Basically it consists of new potatoes, chunks of ham and eggs…simple yet delicious! Others add cheese and salsa but I like it plain. I was able to go wake boarding with my dad, Anna, Kelly and the Gutierrez family while Andy watched Belén. We had too many people in the boat to waterski, but wake boarding was still fun. It was all of our first time out with the boat for the year since the weather has been so crazy so we were all a bit giddy.
That evening, Derik prepared an elaborate chicken dish. Laura and Scott provided a cranberry stuffing which was to die for. My parents made beans (stinky tent night number two) which were tasty and I rounded out the meal with a Dutch Oven chocolate cherry cake which turned out surprisingly well, thanks to Scott doing the baking after I mixed all of the ingredients together. It was a fabulous feast. On top of all of the other eating, I had made three batches of my friend Sara’s famous chocolate chip cookie recipe and all but two of the cookies were consumed during the trip. Needless to say, we did not go hungry!
Saturday evening we had a bit more energy and I even instigated a poker game. The Gutierrez kids made smores and consumed massive quantities of roasted marshmallows of which the adults couldn’t share due to fully bellies.
Sunday, we had breakfast and packed up and went home. The drive home went much faster and my wonderful husband unpacked most of our loads of stuff while I was feeding and taking care of Belén. As always, it was nice to shower and get all of the sunscreen and bug spray off of ourselves. Belén even seemed to enjoy her bath for once. I knew that she had the full camping experience when I sucked boogers out of her nose Monday morning and they were brown instead of their normal clear or mucusy color.
It was all of us with kids’ first time camping as a family and everyone enjoyed it. The older kids (Hernan, Bruno, Gisele, Tucker and Owen) all had a ball and I believe all want to go camping again. Andy, Belén and I are looking forward to hopefully two more camping trips this summer. I need to work on my Dutch Oven skills and we need to figure out how to pass less stuff.
Happy July 4th to Everyone!
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