Bear Lake 2012

This post should be called “The trip gone wrong” or “Things to avoid with two year old twins” or maybe even “Camping is for fools, which we are”  or something along those lines. 

Devin and I were invited by my sister and her husband to go camping with them and their kids to Bear Lake the last weekend in June.  Devin and I talked about it and after me telling him over and over again that we needed to try camping with our boys to give them the experience and they’d be fine in the tent, Devin agreed to go along even though he warned me that things could go terribly wrong.  I ignored him of course.  

Now I don’t want this to come out sounding as if this was the worst trip ever because everything didn’t go terribly wrong.  In fact, I have very fond and happy memories of this trip. I just think that our family outings have pretty much gone as planned up until this point that I think it was kind of a shock to the system. But I’ll get to the “terribly wrong” part in a bit.     

We met up with my sister and her family at Bear Lake for dinner.  The only place (in my mind) to eat dinner when you go to Bear Lake is at a place called La Beaus.   Yummy drive-in food and fantastic shakes.  We filled up on good food and headed back to set up camp and play a bit of baseball and push strollers around (Nate loved that little stroller).




We kept the boys up extra late so that they would, hopefully, go down without a fight.  Our boys sleep fantastic when they are at home in their dark, quiet, warm bedroom.  But not so much anywhere else.  And Devin and I are such light and particular sleepers, that we can’t sleep in the same room with them. Ever.  So we went into our tent to get ready for bed.  And that is where it went terribly wrong.  Our boys thought being in the tent was the funnest thing they’ve ever experienced.  They ran around, screamed, giggled, jumped, and laughed.  We let them do this for a while to get themselves tired out.  But they kept going!  We tried to get them to lay down in their beds and once we got one boy in his bed, the other one was running around again.  So we’d get that one put down, and the other one would be running around again.  They just egged each other on.  We felt so bad that our boys were being so loud and were trying to keep them quiet so that the other campers could get some sleep.  But after a few hours and no settling down, tempers were running high so we decided the most sane thing for us to do (and would save us from harming our children) would be to pack up the boys and drive home.  It was 11:00 at night by this point and it was a two hour drive home.  Devin and I had both taken a Tylenol PM  to help us sleep so it was a looong drive home trying to keep each other awake.  But we got home and put the boys down to bed.  We slept fantastic that night and the boys even slept in a few extra hours the next day.  Once they woke up, we drove back up to Bear Lake and had a fun time on the beach! 

Cute Ashley:


Lexi, Kevin, Alyssa

Devin and the boys sifting the sand to find gold!

Alyssa was digging a stream that went down to the lake:

Nate and Cam loved playing in the lake.  It was incredibly cold water, but they didn’t mind at all.  They walked out into the lake as far as they could until the water was up to their chin.  

Cameron relaxing while eating an Oreo cookie AND a graham cracker. One in each hand.  Now that’s the way to enjoy life :)

My sis and her husband.  Thanks guys for inviting us along for a fun time at the beach…and for putting up with our shenanigans!  

And here’s me having a great and relaxing time at the beach, knowing that instead of camping that night, our boys would be we’d be sleeping in our own beds that night!

So, yes, it is a little dramatic to say that everything went terribly wrong because it was a fun time and aside from the lack of sleeping, the boys did great.  At the time though, I vowed to myself that we’d never go camping again until our boys were at least 21 years old...and had moved out of the house.  There is a bonus to this whole experience though.  In the future if we are on vacation and I need to dish out a “if you don’t stop misbehaving, we’ll just go home”  threat to my boys, they’ll know I’m serious about my threat!