Camping With The Boys

So this past weekend I decided to get in a little family time with my sister Mel and her tribe, so I stayed over for the weekend.  Now there's staying over the normal way, and staying over my way.  We did, of course, my way.

Which involved me bringing my tent over to Mel's property to set up camp in the backyard for 2 days with 2 little boys.  It was absolutely fab, we had a brilliant time.  The boys and I set up the camp, then Kevan and Lach built a little campfire for us to cook dinner on - we had a sausage sizzle - and then Mel brought out some marshmallows which we proceeded to roast over the campfire.  After this we even had a little sing song!  What a fab evening we had!

Bethany though, at one point in the evening was getting a bit fractious, so we let her out of the high chair (yes, a campfire with a high chair) and took her over to the tent.  She thought it was just wonderful, she was jumping up and down on the mattress and flinging herself face forwards into the sleeping bags.  So funny to watch.

Later on in the evening, Mel, Kev and Bethany made their way back to the house, and Lach, Haz and I settled in for the night.  It was really quite funny - there was Lach on one side, with my iPhone, playing Wolfenstein 3D and generally making himself gloriously sick, and on the other side, there was Harry, with my iPod, watching Home Alone.  What a social bunch we were!

Slept quite well that first night, except for one thing.  Whereas both boys had blow up airbeds, I had a piece of thin foam on top of a doona to sleep on.  Suffice to say it was somewhat thin for my rather robust frame.  Coupled with the fact that I was squeezed in the middle between the two boys, and you get the picture.  Nonetheless, sleep did eventually overtake me, and I do recall my eyes having been closed for at least a short period of the evening.

The next day we had a glorious fried breakfast before heading out to Mel's church for the service.  That over, it was back to Chateau le Goff for a spot of lunch, and then the hard work began.  The clean up.  

Not the clean up of the camp - no - I mean the house.  A houseful of boys and a very little girl can only mean one thing - disaster zone.  So the boys were each set tasks and we set to it - the dangling carrot being the reward of Cold Rock and Gamezone if we were successful.  Suffice to say with that as our reward - we were!  So off to Cold Rock and Gamezone...

...and back to the last night in the tent.  However, there was just no way I could have another evening on the foam, so we stopped off at Beck's to pick up their blow up mattress, which, being as its a queen size, Harry and I both slept on.

It was considerably colder the second night, but we were snug in the tent.  The boys had started the evening off on their own in the tent, as Mel and I were in the house watching Die Hard 4.0 - don't worry, the boys had the walkie-talkie should the boogey man come whilst I was absent.  I got back to the tent to find it was 10pm and two little boys were still playing with iPods and iPhones...

I think it was probably just after 11pm before we truly got off to sleep.  But a lovely weekend camping it was too, even if it was in the backyard...!

The highlight (after the camping and campfire of course) was our little video series, In The Wild.  I haven't finished the edit here, but I have included footage of the lovely Bethany attempting to (not) say Lachie's name... enjoy...!