Charlotte's First Camp Out

We love camping in this house and just couldn't wait to get back to the outdoors again! We have a camping trip planned in Island Park, ID with Michael's family the first week in August. So we decided to check out the campsite we reserved and camp there while we could. Brenda came up to visit us that weekend so we gladly took her with us.

Our sweet little campsite. The river is just on the other side of those trees behind our tent. 

We made a stop at Big Spring while we were nearby. There are usually a ton of really big fish swimming under this bridge, but we didn't see any this time. This is Michael and Ivan throwing fish food at a couple ducks. 

So this camping trip was everything but uneventful. Charlotte has a bad habit of projectile vomiting the entire contents of her stomach every couple days. This also happens to coincide with the frequency of her bowel movements. Poor girl only gets a good poop every couple days. So on Friday night, she decided it would be good to puke. All over me. All over her blanket. All over herself. She also managed to poop at the same time. This was quite an explosion. Thank goodness I have packed extra pajamas for her and an extra blanket. I have to say I was pretty prepared for this campout. I know that Idaho gets cold at night, so I put Ivan to bed in about 4 layers, had him laying on a thick blanket with a pillow and had another blanket to cover him. This would have been really nice, IF he would have actually used it. He started to fall asleep on me when I put him to bed. He did not want to sleep in the pack and play in the tent. Instead, he cried and cried. I eventually got him to sleep with me in my sleeping bag. Then Charlotte decided to be hungry. I put Ivan in his crib and fed Charlotte. My parents got Michael and I really nice sleeping bags. They go to 0 degrees and they really are super warm. I absolutely love mine! The only bad thing is, they have to be pretty narrow in order to retain the most heat. This meant that me and Charlotte sleeping together was a little complicated. I had to turn my back to the zipper and have her on the inside so she would be warm then have Brenda zip me in it. This would have been fine if I didn't have to nurse her on both sides in the middle of the night. Rolling around in that thing is pretty impossible. So after Charlotte waking up every 2 hours to eat, Ivan waking up without his blanket on in the middle of the night, and both the kids deciding to be awake at 530... I was ready for a nap! Michael, the good husband that he is, took Ivan out to explore so us girls could attempt more sleep. Charlotte did go back to sleep, yay! Then twenty minutes later, I hear a kid crying. At first I thought, oh no, it couldn't be Ivan. Then it got closer and louder and I knew it was him. Normally Michael does a great job of consoling the kids when they cry. So this time, when he frantically called for me outside the tent, I knew there was gonna be blood. Ivan had been exploring, still in his footie pajamas, and tripped over a rock. He face planted, with his pacifier in his mouth, and cut his gums open. At this point, he doesn't have any molars, so his bottom teeth chomped right down on his gums just behind his front teeth. It was pretty scary to come out of the tent and see blood all over Ivan's mouth. Thank goodness I can think in the sight of blood, thank you vet tech program, and I grabbed a cold bottle of water. I rinsed out Ivan's mouth so I could assess the extent of the damage and to numb his mouth a little with the cold. He stopped bleeding pretty quickly and I couldn't really see any cuts or gashes so I knew he wouldn't need stitches. I did prepare for injury, so we had the first aid kit and tylenol with us. We quickly drugged him up and gave him a lollipop.

The remnant ring of blood. 

Ivan's chosen spot to eat his lollipop. We were really worried he'd be too active to want to sit in the backpack for hikes. I guess he showed us.

I've got to say this was not my most favorite camping experience. When we woke up Saturday morning and finally decided to sit in the car, it was 32 degrees. That was at 7:30 in the morning. I can only imagine how cold it got in the middle of the night. After we left the campground, we took a scenic drive through Yellowstone and the Tetons. We stopped in Jackson Hole, WY for the tail end of Stampede Days. Then back to the car for a long drive home.