Memorial Day at the Bowl & Pitcher {Camping}

Happy Tuesday! I hope everyone is easing back into the swing of things after a long restful Memorial Day Weekend. We spent our holiday weekend taking Lincoln on his very first camping trip! Little man was so excited and spent all of Friday at school telling his his teachers, "mommy, daddy, me camping!"

We had very low expectations for this first big trip, and as a result wanted to be fairly close to home in case our first big camping adventure was a complete failure. I'm happy to report that it wasn't a failure at all! We did end up leaving early to head home but I truly think that was more because of the heat and lack of activities more than anything else.

Because we wanted to stay close to home, we booked our reservation at the Bowl & Pitcher in Riverside State Park. We originally booked 2 days and had planned on staying Saturday afternoon through Monday morning. The first 24 hours were awesome. Lincoln had so much fun helping set up camp, explore the area around us, dig in the dirt, and playing in the hammock. I had also brought a long paints, and a couple of different crafts for him to do during the downtime which he got a huge kick out of! I also bought him this book to really get him in the mood and to try and alleviate any potential night time fears about sleeping outside. He LOVED the book and the sounds it made and was so comfortable sleeping in the tent.

We did end up leaving Sunday evening, instead of spending the last night there. This was mostly due to the heat (it was HOT HOT HOT) and by about 5PM, we were all getting a little testy with one another. We had planned on spending a lot of time hiking and exploring to take up most of our day on Sunday, but little man was so enamored with the tent and campsite itself, that he didn't want to do much exploring (which is unusual for  our little dude). As a result we spent a lot of time sitting around the campsite, which limited activities (other than the paints and a few toys we had brought along). Because of this, our usually happy camper (ha!) was not his normal happy self by Sunday evening and asked to "go home."

By that point, I was desperately wanting a shower and was not looking forward to another night of sharing a twin size blow up mattress with my wiggly little due, so we decided to pack up early and head home.

The rest of the weekend was spent spending time playing in the backyard and getting our patio "summer ready!" All in all, it was a really great weekend!