Our First Family Camping Trip

This weekend we loaded up the car and went on our very first family camping trip. We went with 5 other couples and had a total of 11 kids. We text camped in the Rocky Mountain National Forest which is about 2 hours away from our house. It was.....fun, beautiful, exciting and exhausting.

We left here Friday around 2pm and headed up to Estes Park. Jason and I had been there one time before (we stayed in a hotel that time) but we both had forgotten just how beautiful it was.

When we arrived, we found our camp site (we reserved three of them) and all the guys started unloading and putting up the tents. I brought the little car that we borrowed so AJ would have a place to hang out while we were getting all set up. He really enjoyed himself!

He helped Jason set up with blow up mattress:

He played around in the tent:

He tried to escape the tent too!

After we got set up, we decided to walk around our campsite and just check out our surroundings. These are a few of the things we saw:

ELK! They were literally walking thru out campsite

Such a beautiful river....We listened to it all day and night

When we were done with that, it was dinner time. We borrowed this wonderful high chair that hooks to a table and it worked WONDERFULLY! It was great to be able to contain AJ and not to have to hold him to feed him. He liked the chair just fine and was able to watch everything that was going on around him while he was in it.




Sleeping was a problem. A BIG PROBLEM - The first night he slept until about 3am and then started crying. I don't know if he was cold- he was wearing socks, an under shirt, and Winter PJ's- but I couldn't let him cry it out since he would wake the entire camp site. So, I tried everything I could... I even tried nursing him! It didn't work... So Jason drove him around for about 30 minutes and then came back and he woke again while we tried to transfer him. So, I got up with him and drove until he fell asleep again and I decided just to "sleep" in my car. I parked and dozed off a little, but I couldn't get comfortable and I was also scared that I'd wake up and see a bear outside my car. It was rough... The second night, we decided to give AJ a little Benadryl- I know, bad parents!- and it worked a little better. Jason did have to drive him around at 4am for a while. We didn't know what else to do!

The second day we went for 2 hikes. The first was really close to our campsite and unfortunately, since we got very little sleep, it was not so much fun. AJ was super tired and didn't want to be in the backpack. I was so sick of the whining I left with him half way thru and put him down for a nap. We did get a pretty good family shot:

Later that afternoon, we hiked this GORGEOUS waterfall- called Alberta Falls. It was a little over a mile hike. Here are a few pictures from that hike:

It was SUCH a beautiful hike; these pictures don't even do it justice.

Here are a few other things about this weekend:

Right next to our campsite there was a small amphitheatre and the kids LOVED it! In fact, yesterday they put on a talent show for all the adults. It was adorable! AJ even got up there and showed off his talents- he crawled across the stage and then played with a hula hoop. It was so cute! I've said it before, but he just adores other kids. He was playing all weekend with the kids- they all entertained him so well and just loved him. They wanted to feed him, play with him, read to him and just make him laugh. I could tell he just wanted to be down on the ground running around with them.

Playing with the boys

AJ did put pretty much everything in his mouth, but it wasn't as bad as I expected. He was in his car, high chair or backpack much of the time. We also lucked out BIG time with the weather. We were expecting thunderstorms all weekend and it only rained once. Phew!

All in all, it was really a fun time. More sleep is all I would have asked for :)