Dirt and marshmallows

When your children don't have enough dirt and marshmallows in their diet, it's time to go camping!

That's what we did for two days: we went camping in the San Bernardino Mountains. When Lukas heard the name of the mountains (after he asked the name of the mountains), he said, "They're the ones on fire?" We didn't understand, until he said, "you know, the San BERNardino Mountains". Our son is punny and he doesn't even know it!

No, there wasn't any fire, except the one we built in our fire ring, but there was lots of dirt, half of which was consumed by Konrad (note him chewing on an old pine cone...no, it's not a stogie, but it sure looks like one, doesn't it!) Konrad learned the first rule of playing at a campsite: the more you chew on something and drop it, the more dirt you get.

And there were marshmallows both nights, and S'mores, of course. The funny thing was after the first night, Lukas decided he doesn't like S'mores anymore...he just wants marshmallows. I think this was the first time Natalie had a whole S'more to herself, and she definitely enjoyed it, especially the parts that made it past her lips!

The first night of sleep...not much sleep happened. I broke the first rule of camping with small children: make sure the kids are warm enough at night. Well, I didn't put that rule first in my "how to tent camp with small children" posting, but I should have put it first! Of course the kids slept great from 7:30 p.m. until 10 p.m., when Tom and I went to bed. After that, they alternated back and forth crying, which is very unusual for our children. It didn't occur to me that they were cold, because they have always been extremely warm in the sleeping bags we have for them. And two of our children don't communicate. But when the child who does communicate woke up at 3 a.m. saying that he was cold, we assumed that the other two were, too.

So the next night (there barely was a "next" night at the campsite...the "next" night was almost at home in our own beds) every child had a hat on their head and mittens on their hands (or long sleeves that covered their hands). Lo and behold, everyone slept well! Including and especially the adults.

And in between eating dirt and marshmallows and not sleeping, we did manage to take a short hike down to a beautiful meadow (so Lukas can see first-hand what a meadow is), see the international space station fly over both nights (including the first night when it was early enough for the kids to see it), drive around Big Bear Lake so the kids could nap, stop at the Big Bear visitor's center and feel real live (I mean, dead) bear fur, and stop for Thrifty drug store ice cream (which is now at the Rite-Aid drug store...I don't know, "Rite-Aid" doesn't sound as small-town American as "Thrifty".)

Natalie had fun making shadow puppets the morning of our departure, and Lukas was quite helpful folding up the tent...how many years before he can actually help put up and take down the tent?

But wait, there's more! Before we came back home, we stopped in Yucaipa at Riley's Farms to pick apples at the orchards there with friends from church. But it's time to do another load of laundry, so that story and pictures will have to wait until tomorrow.