this weekend was hazel's first camping trip! we went to rock island campground on icicle creek road outside of leavenworth with a bunch of good friends, and it was a blast! hazel loves being outside, and i'm pretty sure she would camp all the time if she had the option. she was so happy to be outside, looking at the trees, playing with the rocks, watching the waterfalls, and just enjoying the natureyness of it all.
on friday night everything was going well- we got to the campsite around 4 (thanks to kate and tom for going early to score two great sites!), got all set up, and had a great evening. hazel went to bed around 8, and was happier and more playful than usual (when she's tired she usually starts to crank a bit, but not this time...). she went to sleep like a champ, and jana and i enjoyed a drink or two and congratulated ourselves on how successfully things were going.... then hazel woke up 45 minutes later crying and yelling. and then again 45 minutes after that. and then an hour after that. and that repeated all night long, with her going maybe an hour at a stretch between big screamy wakeups. this is completely out of the norm for her, and we tried to eliminate as many possible sources of unpleasantness as possible... but she kept waking up screaming. in the morning around 7, she woke us up with her cute little playful cooing noises, and was her cute little happy self once again... leaving us totally puzzled about the source of the severe unpleasantness. we actually decided to pack it in and leave that day, rather than staying til sunday as planned- i'm leaving tomorrow morning on a 5-day work trip, leaving jana to handle weekday work/daycare tasks on her own for the first time, and we didn't want to risk another night of bad sleep to mess up hazel's routine (not to mention exhausting the crap out of us). we got as far as packing up our tent and all of our belongings, and then later changed our minds and decided to give it another try- and we're really glad we did! last night was fantastic, with hazel once again super happy, and this time she slept from 8 pm all the way til 5:30 am without waking up once! so it turns out that she loves camping after all.... very good to know!
oh, and i had an extra fun time assembling and disassembling the tent *twice*, because when we arrived i discovered that the shock cords in two of the three main support poles for the tent had broken, leaving me with a pile of individual pole segments. not good! luckily the medical tape from our first aid kit was just what we needed, and things worked out great. and then we stopped by REI on the way home today looking for a jacket, and instead we found a half-off tent left over from the REI garage sale, so we totally scored on a basically brand new fancy REI 6-person tent for $100!
anyway, here's the good part....
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| early morning hazeldad walk to the river... |
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| chillin in the lil' camp chair (thanks for letting us borrow it, auggie!) |
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| at smallwood's farmstand in peshastin... hazel doesn't quite get this whole thing yet, apparently. |
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| 2.2 feet tall! |
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| chillin at the river... |
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| it turns out that hazel *really* likes rocks! |
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| early morning snuggles |
