Our camping trip:

We went camping from June 29- July 4th. The girls had a great time. Over the weekend there were a lot of kids around. We were very close to the playground which is where the girls spent most of their time. We did swim a little bit, too, but the playground was the big draw!

On Monday, it rained a little, but we still managed to fit in a nature preserve park called Fawn-Doe-Rosa. We bought lots of food to feed the deer, bunnies, goats and other animals.

On Tuesday, it was really hot and muggy. We went to Interstate Park. The girls climbed the rocks and had a great time. I had to try to let my fear ofheights and them falling go to let them have fun. My camping buddy took lots of pictures, but she had to send those in for developing. On the way home, we could see that it was going to rain/storm, so we decided to go to a movie. We had already gotten a local paper and scoped out the theater and times the previous day when it was raining. Before we could get out of our camper though the storm hit. It felt like things were blowing and hitting the camper. I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz when she was in the tornado. It was really windy and rainy. We got to the van and went to the movie and by the time we got there, the sirens were sounding. A severe thunderstorm warning. By the time we finished seeing Ratatouille, the storm had passed. We were glad to see the camper still standing. We did lose our brand new canopy as the structure bent with the wind. We ended up throwing out 3 garbage bags full of stuff that got wet or old stuff that was expired. We learned that we need to not keep our food outside and that we need to put our chairs under the camper. Normally we just leave everything out. This was our first real rain and real storm while camping. Scared Joyce and I, but the girls were fine because we already had decided to do the movie before the rain hit. We were still cleaning up and drying out Wednesday morning when we needed to pack up and go home.

It was a fun camping trip. It was a little wierd in that there was hardly anyone camping after Sunday. I found that odd considering it was 4th of July week. Either everyone else was at different campgrounds, or we totally missed the boat on which weekend to camp for 4th of July.