Soggy Camping

This last weekend was the Diamond Jubilee weekend, which provided us with a good excuse to get out some bunting, wave some flags, and have an extended weekend of camping with friends.  This filled me with happiness at the prospect of seeing Sagga friends and spending time with them, and dread at the idea of sleeping in a tent with a 2.5 year old and a 9 month old.  In actual fact, the sleeping in the tent with them was the relatively easy bit - Ben settled like a little star and slept all night both nights, and Rebecca wasn't too bad, she woke a few times but went back to sleep with a bit of comfort feeding (although this made me very cold!).  So the positive that I can take away from it all is that the actual camping with kids can be done, and hopefully will be done again. However next time I will make sure of  a few things, following these important life lessons I have learned -

• In Context, In Car DVD Players are a Good Thing.
• Camping further away from home that 2 hours is NOT a Good Thing
• Camping with kids in torrential rain is NOT a Good Thing
• Using a campsite where you can park the car next to the tent is  a Good Thing
• Sometimes Soft Play is a Very Good Thing

Oh yes - it was a long way, and very wet and cold.  This was so frustrating after such a lovely couple of weeks in the sunshine, but the weather really was horrendous which made is really tough at times.
Thank goodness for the hard work of friends who made sure that we had food/hot water etc, and managed to sort out a wonderfully warm scout hut for the Sunday afternoon as an emergency measure, without which I'm not sure I would have held it together!

The journey there was long and hard, with delays on the motorway.  A 3.5 hour journey ended up taking us 6, although this included a good long lunch stop.  We diverted and round a lovely place to have lunch and stretch our legs, and I forced Paul into setting up the portable DVD player for Ben in the car that we had borrowed from Matt and Les.  He was reluctant, but within 5 minutes of setting back off, with Ben happily watching Shaun the Sheep in silence, he was won over.....  Lesson 1 - in context,  In Car DVDs are a Good Thing.

Sunday morning we woke to rain rain rain.  After having the "shall we just give up and go home" conversation, we retreated to a soft play in the morning, which soothed my soul as I never thought a soft play could.  We all then returned to site to the wonderful news about the building which meant we were able to let the kids have fun in the warm and dry, and we could relax with a takeaway pizza and a glass of wine.

The next morning was mainly dry with a little sunshine which allowed us to dry our tents and pack up - packing was not an easy job as the cars were parked a long way from the tents and we had to use trolleys to transport everything - as Paul said "you scouts don't really make things easy for yourselves do you....".  So by the time we left for home after lunch I was pretty shattered having spent the morning chasing after kids/trying to sort out stuff and not really getting round to eating or drinking properly as I was too busy sorting them out.  We were heading to Mat and Les's house so that we could drop off the camping stuff as they were borrowing it, which meant a diversion but actually, in the end, that was a bloody good thing.

I was feeling grim but fell asleep in the car so hoped I would feel better on waking.  Rebecca and Ben also slept the entire way.  However I didn't feel any better and when we got to Sutton Coldfield and actually had to go to bed after throwing up at their house.  I felt a little better after that so we decided to head on back home but Ben had a meltdown getting back in the car when we wouldn't let him climb into his seat and put his seat belt on himself (he was too tired to manage it).  We then had an hour journey home of him wailing "That's my job"... with Rebecca joining in on the crying for the last 30 minutes.  Unfortunately we had had to give back the DVD player to Matt otherwise this may have distracted him.  So we arrived home shattered with wailing children who we  eventually managed to get to bed, and collapsed ourselves.

So, in summary "overambitious" was how we would describe the weekend.  That said, it really was great to see everyone, and we're glad we did it, now that we have recovered!  But next time we will stick to a bit more local, and make sure the sun is shining (and buy a DVD player!).