summer fun

Despite the appearances on our quiet blog, we have been super busy this summer doing all kinds of fun stuff!

I have loads of updates, which hopefully will happen in the coming days. I’ll start today with the most recent adventure:

Camping!

We’ve had this tent up quite a few times to play in, but we have never taken the plunge and actually slept in it. That changed last night!

The kids were so excited! Rob came out and told a few bedtime stories – and then retreated back into the house.

I had the pleasure of sleeping out there with the kids. I must say that although I rarely had the chance to go camping as a kid, I absolutely adored it. Loved being immersed in nature, loved the rustic life, loved waking up to the fresh air and birds singing. In fact, when I was 15 I spent 6 weeks sleeping in a tent in a campsite in Spain. It was awesome! But – ahem – 21 years can change a person…

The first issue was the fact that our backyard has no level ground, so we were sleeping on a slope. So not comfortable. Secondly, for some reason the kids thought I was a magnet and they literally slept on top of me all night long.

And thirdly, at precisely 10:41pm, I was awakened by a shrieking sound I’d never heard before. It was like a high-pitched barking, and I heard that sound along with a number of hoofs racing from the woods behind our house down to the front of our house, back up, back down, and back up again in about 5 seconds flat. Then I could tell they were stopped not far from our tent. I had no idea what kind of wild beasts of the night were out there, and I wasn’t about to peek my head out of the tent to find out. So I was up for quite a while wondering if we were all about to get trampled. They must have eventually left, and I must have eventually fallen back to sleep.

Today I am so tired I am utterly useless.

BUT – I think the kids had fun! And hopefully we’ll be doing a lot more camping yet. Because deep down, I really do still love to camp. But maybe next time we can find a level surface and some earplugs.

p.s. I think I figured out what those “wild beasts of the night” were. Skip to 00:28, and then imagine the sound higher and continuous, as if he’s scared and being chased by something. That’s what I heard.

n