3 Firsts for Katy

Katy sitting around the campfire. She had her own chair, but mine was more comfortable I guess. :)

Katy getting ready to get in the boat

The end of last month we went camping with Donny's family and some friends. It was Katy's first time camping and I think it was the first time for most of the other kids as well. Everyone seemed to really enjoy it - we certainly did! Katy absolutely loved it! She ran and ran and ran. She loved having other kids to play with too. Robert's (a friend from work) daughter Gracie is three and she took it upon herself to be Katy's "babysitter." It was really cute to watch them walking around holding hands. I wish I could have gotten more pictures, but I forgot to charge the camera battery before we left, so I had to be really picky with the pictures I chose. It had been too long since we had been camping, and hopefully it won't be that long before we go again. We would love to get a camper, but that's probably a ways off for us. We bought a bigger tent for this campout so that it would fit the three of us and Brian. We didn't try to put it up before we went camping so it was a bit frustrating trying to figure it out. I think part of our problem was that we were on a camper site, so we couldn't stake our tent down. While we were setting it up we watched camper after camper go driving by and I was getting really jealous. I used to think that using a camper was cheating and not real camping, but now I have seen the light and think that's the way to go! I'm okay with cheating! :) Anyway, we finally got the tent up after a few choice words and some excellent ghetto-rigging by Donny. (It wasn't that bad, I'm mostly teasing) I think we'll like it better now that we know how to set it up. Katy loved it. She didn't want to come out. When we did get her to come out I took her down to the playground with Afton and Gracie to play for a while. Katy was having a great time climbing up the slide, until she slipped and fell down it instead. It was a little slide, but she got a bloody nose none the less. It was her first and I'm sure not her last. It was so sad. I've never dealt with that before, so I didn't really know what to do, but we got her cleaned up and she was fine in less than five minutes and ready to play again. I had to get a picture of that.

Katy's first bloody nose. She's scowling at me in the tent.

Katy also took quite an interest in the fire, which made us all really nervous. Meme and Papa especially kept saying to watch her around the fire. Logan was poking the fire with a stick and Katy thought that was really cool and kept trying to "help." I think that was the hardest part - keeping her occupied with something else instead of the fire. The next morning we tried to take Katy out on the paddle boats so Donny and Robert could do some fishing. She enjoyed it as long as we were moving, but once we stopped she wanted to get in the water. We had to paddle to shore to let me and Katy off and Donny took Al and Logan out instead. We tried her again when it was time to paddle back to the dock. She sat in the middle and grabbed hold of the steering knob and "helped." It probably would have made someone watching us from shore dizzy as much as we were going around. (I wanted to put the life jacket picture here, but it didn't work, so it's at the top)

So, it was trip with three firsts for Katy - her first camping trip, bloody nose and boat ride. What an exciting weekend! Needless to say, we were all very ready for bed when we got home Saturday night.