Our First Family Camping Trip

We took the boys camping this weekend for their first time ever. We (Matt, Lochlan, Gavin, our dog LLoyd and I) joined some other families from our Colorado Mountain Mamas hiking group in between Fairplay and Alma, Colorado. Our friend Kelly's parents have fifteen acres of land and a rustic cabin there, which is right near Southpark (like the tv show). There were eight parents, seven kids and five dogs in serenity this weekend in the Rockies!
We went on a little hike in the woods, hung out around the property, cooked dinner on the fire, let the kids and the dogs run wild and watched Gavin trying to pee-pee on every tree in the woods!
For those of you that know, we have been trying to potty train Gavin since he came to live with us in Asheville last July. We have gone in waves with it, but we figured out that if we keep a diaper off him and tell him to pee-pee on the trees, he is all about it. He really enjoys trying to mark every tree and he had free roam of lots of them this weekend! One of the major highlights of the camping trip was watching Gavin have fun with this.
I'm not sure what the temperature was overnight, but when we loaded up the car this morning at 8am, it was 50 degrees. It was pretty cold overnight in the tent, but with the body heat between the five of us (Matt, Lochlan, me, Gavin and Lloyd; in that order), we managed. It was a good thing we brought each of our pillows, the boys quilts that Grandma Ann made for them and four down comforters!
It took a little bit to get the boys to fall asleep in the tent, but it was a lot easier than we thought it was going to be. I stayed up almost the entire night (except for two hours), as I was so afraid of my boys being cold. Also, I am a deep sleeper and was nervous that I was going to roll over on Lochlan and squish him. I kept flipping side to side to make sure the boys were covered, as well as Matt & Lloyd the dog. When 6:30 rolled around this morning and everyone woke up, I was ready and waiting for them!
It was a great weekend and an awesome first time camping experience for the boys. Matt & I were talking on the drive home today about how lucky they are that they get to get out and experience nature so much. So many kids play inside, are in front of the t.v. and video games, etc and it is so important to us that they are outside the majority of the time. We were talking about when we were kids and how it was tough for our parents to even get us inside after dark, as we wanted to be outside all of the time. The senses/skills children can get from being in nature alone is something they can never learn by watching it on a screen. That was worth it to me, staying up most of the night last night, knowing that it was all worth it for my children to have this experience that we had this weekend.
Enjoy these photos from our trip!


























P.S. Thanks SO super much to Jenna, Dave & baby Ryder Conlin for letting us borrow their awesome tent! Our little 2/3 person backpacking tent would NOT have cut it, and they were so generous to let us borrow theirs for the camping trip. Thanks you guys!!!!