So we went camping last weekend. It is always such a big deal to go anywhere especially with kids. The car gets stuffed full of all our gear (which is usually the wife who ends up packing!) then when you get there you realize you forgot something in our case I forgot to pack the camping chairs-ya I know where do you sit around the camp fire?? Well since our kids go to bed so early at home (Ellie at 7 pm and Kale at 7:30) we just decided to go to bed! We went in about 9 pm and I read to the kids for a while then we tried to get them to go to sleep but of course the sun isn't down yet. The next morning was horrible because none of us got enough sleep and the kids well all of us were so cranky and went straight home and crashed! I of course get up and go to the bathroom every 2 hours but I found the best toilet seat you put on a bucket and some garbage bags made to go in! They were fantastic. I put it in the corner of the tent and didn't even have to go out. The garbage bags are wonderful because the have stuff in them so you don't smell anything! You got to love inventions like this. But despite all this, it was fun to get the kids into the mountains. They had so much fun especially Ellie, the walked around everywhere and kept saying "hike, hike" it was a good time. It is sad to say that this was the first time Nate and I have been camping together! He has gone alot since we have been married but never together. Hopefully we do it more often and when the kids get older it will be even better!

I will start off this blog by telling you how we started off our summer. My sister's live in North Carolina so we decided to take a 3 week vacation back east to see them. My sister lives a few miles from the NASCAR Lowe's motor speedway so we started off the trip touring the racetrack. Kale was in heaven. He loves race cars and loved the tour. He even got to get inside one of the cars which he thought was really cool!! We go to watch some cars practice. I can really see how people get into NASCAR. It was really fun.
We then took a road trip down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We spent a few days on the beach. It was heaven. It was nice to be in the same spot all day and have it entertain my kids all day!! It was also nice to have my sister's kids entertain my kids while I layed on the beach. We then went up to Washingto DC and spent a few days. We got there late one night then got up early to go into the city and it was raining so hard. It had rained so much many of the streets were flooded!! It ended up being so cold and we all had shorts on and got soaking wet. We tried to do indoor stuff but we still had to walk to get to each place then we had tickets to go up the Washington monument and had to stand outside to wait to go in. It was pretty miserable and I got sick and felt horrible!! The next few days were great though. It was warm and not a cloud in the sky. It was a really fun trip and it was great to see my sister's. I love to see them and wish we lived closer to them. On our way home, we were flying standby, we didn't make the flight out of JFK and so we were stuck in New York and had to get a hotel room which was really crappy and we had no where to go the next day when we checked out of our hotel. We started walking around and found a park but it started down pouring and so we went to the bathrooms by the park and stood. The police came driving through the park and told us we were in a really bad part of Queens that the projects were just across the street! It was pretty funny. We decided to go to the airport and were there about 5 hours before our plane left. I wish we could have gone into New York City but we didn't have time and it was bad weather. So we were glad to get home!