First Family Camping Trip: Deerlick Creek, Y'all.

I do not love the outdoors.

That is, loving the outdoors does not come naturally to me.

I am totally working on that.

So I dug deep. I'm cultivating a depth that I lack. 

We took our pop-up Apache camping this weekend.

We had encouragement getting it popped-up.
While the kids swung on the nearest tree.

The ceiling was secured...

The beds were made...

And voila!  We even had pumpkins and a doormat!

Corinne learned to ride her tricycle and MORE IMPORTANTLY learned to steer:

We played some ladder ball, courtesy of our camping neighbors:

We hiked and saw the water and the NO DIVING signs that some teenagers (maybe?) had scratched bad words into...which sent Henry and Svea into fits (sorry no pictures of this):

Then we found the playground by the bath house which had a tire swing:

Then it was finally time to carve pumpkins.  Thank HEAVENS for our neighbor/church family friends who don't mind the pumpkin gunk. Henry and I were cringing at the muck.

And Svea too...a little bit.

Luckily, our fellow camper Darryl (dad is named Karryl) had a power tool attachment for cleaning out the gunk.

Henry loved it.  Check out Darryl's hat. I bet Henry loved that too.
But he didn't say anything.
Yet.

Henry's masterpiece (he chose the smaller pumpkin due to the amount of innards.

All in all, we survived.
Yes, indeed.

I will totally do it again.  I appreciate my family's patience with my need for transition space. I will learn to be a camper.
Henry and Svea and Corinne loved it so much...they kept thanking us for bringing them and using words like "awesome" and "so cool".

I guess we are converted at this point.  More posts of camping adventures to come then, y'all...