Camping Comedies

We've had a wave of sickness at our house this week and haven't left our house for fear of spreading the contagion, so it seems like a perfect time to relive the excitement of our camping trips from a few weeks ago - one planned camping trip, one unplanned…

Now those of you who have kids know, you don't just 'go' camping. Especially with a newborn. In fact, the night before, as we packed everything but the kitchen sink plus 100 extra diapers, we *briefly* considered dropping out. But, craziness and love of adventure won out over common sense ("hey, thanks to Colby we don't sleep anymore anyways, we might as well go not sleep in the desert!") and we shoved everything we could into our Explorer (the van isn't so good at off-roading…) As you can see, there was no room for Ken, but we made do :)

We caravanned out to the magnificent desert dunes of Liwa with a bunch of our friends and set up camp. It felt like we were out in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but sand in sight. Then a bunch of Emerati teens on their dune buggies drove all over the camp, and a herd of camels traipsed by on their way to a camel farm right by us, and we realized we weren't quite as isolated as we thought :) It just added to the overall charm of the trip though.

It was a true success - sure there were the usual mishaps and craziness that come with our family outings, but Colby gave me the special gift of only waking up once that night, which was unprecedented, so maybe we'll do this again in the near future! COMING SOON: The story about our second, unplanned camping trip...

Will, ready to set off with me and photograph the approaching line of camels!

"Camel" happens to be one of Owen"s favorite animals and words, so he just stood there shouting it over and over as we watched this long line of camels appear from nowhere, just over the dunes, and make their way single-mindedly to their pen. No one was even leading them!

Owen didn't want to stand still - there were camels to be chased!

Now Will and I were so excited, we took off barefoot after these camels to intercept them before they made it to their pen. Bad choice - we had to run across some salt flats, not quite as soft as the sand. And then, a couple friendly camels decided to stop following the leader and investigate us. These suckers are pretty big up close, and not at all timid. I was afraid of getting slobbered on, and then they started following us when we tried to walk off. One actually stepped on me (now I've got a scar with a story - a faint scar, but one nonetheless :) but we managed to make our escape.

Owen was a little less certain up close, but still happy!

He sure loves his Dad.

Time to get dinner cooking!

Different fire pit, don't worry! Kept Owen happy for quite a while.

We're thinking of paying someone to haul a pile of sand like this into our backyard, considering how it was all the 13 mobile kids needed to entertain themselves for hours and hours (the 2 babies weren't as impressed…) The sand was so pretty - different colors in the different light. This is in the morning.

Last bit of excitement came when I was helping Ken put away our tent - we found a scorpion. I know he was lying there in wait for me, since I was nervous about stepping on one the night before. The kids caught him in our sand bucket and watched him for a while.