The Lavelle Family: Kades Camping Adventure

I have been pondering how to approach this blog entry. Its been hard whether to hit the positives or just plain out hit the negatives of the trip and say how much it sucked and I wanted to cry and go home. Yep. It was pretty much like that.
I love camping. Always have. My first date with Paul was a camping trip. And we have been camping numerous times a year together over the 7 years of being together. So I was feeling pretty confident that Kade would fit into this whole glorious camping passion of ours quite well. We were wrong. Really wrong...at least for now.
I have to say, it wasn't all bad and yes there were pleasant moments in the 24 hours that we attempted this craziness. But lets start with the simple fact of the weather. It was windy. Butt-a** windy and Kade wasn't liking it. I remember looking at his poor eyes and thinking, those are eyes that are not into this wind...And it was cold. Not the 70 predicted. It was 60..maybe..and at night, it got in the low 40's maybe colder, which we kind of expected, but it was cold...cold for Santa Margarita Lake at the end of May.
The hardest part was that Kade was so darn upset. Nothing seemed to really make him happy. He screamed, fussed, cried...tried to laugh and was so not himself. Well, those of you who know him, he gets a bit upset and wants you to know about it, but this was too much. Paul and I were trying to set up the tent, while Kade was screaming in the pack and looking at each other, like we should bail now. Thinking back, we should have.
But we tried to brave it out. We wanted Kade to love this. He did love the fire. The one thing that seemed to calm him down and make him relaxed. He enjoyed that his friend Wesley was there. He liked the million little walks we took him on so he would stop crying. He liked sleeping in the tent, even though the bed had a slow leak cuz Paul had to jam the bed in the tent, and then sleeping at night was like being on a water bed that might pop and I had fear that I would catapult Kade off the bed.
So all in all. I think we will try again in a few years, with warming weather conditions, at a campsite that is flat and allows for more walking and enjoyment.
That my friends was our camping experience with Kade. We came home exhausted and then, I got the stomach flu. Bad. So bad. I was thankful to be home and not at that darn campsite. That would have just been the rotten cherry on top of a bad Sunday.
Still feeling crummy, but hoping to be up and running soon.
Enjoy the pictures, I think we captured all of the happy moments we could. I am glad we tried it out and feel good that we braved the elements. It felt hardcore, like we were camping at Mt. Everest or something. Not really, but it felt gnarly.
And a thank you to Julie and little Wesley for joining the craziness and braving this camping trip with us all. What were we thinking???