Camping at Inks State Park

We decided about a month ago to go camping with our friends, the Bonds and the other Smiths (Dan and Tannie). The Bonds live about 2 1/2 hours away and the Smiths live in Cedar Park, about an hour away. Since we all wanted to go camping together, we decided to camp at Inks State Park, which is about 30 minutes from us.

Adam and Rachael love to camp and usually stay for at least a couple days. On the other hand, Josh thinks that camping is "pretending to be homeless." So the Bonds got there Friday and stayed at the camp site both Friday and Saturday nights, while Josh, Linc and I got there on Saturday. Dan and his two boys stayed both nights, but Tannie joined us Saturday afternoon after finishing her half marathon.

We had such a great time with everyone. Even though we haven't all been together as a group in awhile, we just fell right back into that "old friend" feeling; joking with each other, keeping each other's kids from falling in the fire, and eating each other's food.

The weather was absolutely beautiful during the day, but it got REALLY cold at night. We went hking during the day and had fun just catching up, while the kids jumped in the tiny little stream that ran through the two camp sites. They all were soaking wet and were grateful for the dry clean clothes we all brought.

Tin foil dinners were great and smores and popcorn finished us off. Bedtime was a different story. Now, Lincoln is not the type of kid that will play his way to bed. He won't play, play, play, then get sleepy and lay down. He will play, play, play, and then have a melt down because he is so tired! So, my solution was to take him for a drive around the park at the point of his melt down. It worked! He fell asleep in the car then I transfered him to the sleeping bag in our tent.

That gave Josh and I lots of time to just sit and talk with everyone. Finally we decided to go to bed (who knows what time we went to bed) and Josh cozied into his sleeping bag and I tried to snuggle in next to Lincoln. He and I were sharing a sleeping bag, which was a bad idea. I never realized how squirmy Lincoln is when he sleeps. Right as I found a comfortable, warm spot, Lincoln woke up.

At first he just wanted to sit up, then hug, then talk, and finally he started singing. Then he tried to crawl over me to get to Daddy snoring away next to us. So I let him. Lincoln started patting Daddy on the shoulder and Josh woke up thinking it was me. He turned over saying "WHAT?" then realized it was Lincoln. "Hi buddy" was his very sleepy response. I figured one of us needed to sleep so I brought Lincoln back to my side of the tent and Josh rolled back over to sleep some more.

After singing one of Linc's favorite Sesame Street songs to him about a million times, we both fell asleep. But it wasn't very good sleep because it was so cold and I gave Linc most of the sleeping bag. When we woke up, Lincoln came over and gave me a big hug and said, "HI!" It was all worth it.

The next morning, we ate breakfast tacos, cleaned up, and packed everything away. The park has a big playground, so we stopped to let the kids run around before heading out. We were at the park longer then we thought, so we just pulled out all the left over food and had a big picnic before heading home. We really had a great time with everyone!!! We will definitely go camping again with Lincoln...but he gets his own sleeping bag next time.