Camping For Beginners

We survived our first family of four camping trip!! And you know what? It really was a great time. We met the Duncan's at Campland in San Diego and the weekend could not have been more beautiful. The weather was amazing and the campground was perfect for families....especially when we had four children all 3 and under. I guess you could call Campland "camping for beginners." It's not your ordinary campground. There are swimming pools, an awesome park, an outdoor amphitheater, convenience store, cafe, and ice cream parlor all on site, not to mention it's only steps away from Mission Bay. This is my kind of camping!! After we set up camp Wednesday afternoon (yes we all slept in tents) we enjoyed the swimming pools and then a delicious fire-cooked dinner. All of the kids went to bed better than expected and even allowed the adults to stay up a little later to play games.

Thursday we hit up Mission Bay and enjoyed being at the beach and doing all the standard beach activities. The kids loved every second of it, and I enjoyed basking in the sun and watching them.

After Paul made this mini "pool" that's all Audrey and Austin wanted to do. I think Austin was getting a little annoyed of Audrey, but they were cute when they started screaming at each other. Audrey was loving being dirty.

Relaxing in the Bay

The kids enjoyed feeding the ducks, we wished we would have brought more stuff to feed them. It was amazing how close the ducks got to us.

Lunch at the campsite

It was so nice having the park right next to our campsite. The kids enjoyed playing over there. I think my little Audrey had the time of her life.

Even though you can't tell from this picture, Owen had fun at the park too, he just has to go to the bathroom in this picture. (We are still having potty-issues from time to time with him.)Camping and roasting marshmallows go hand-in-hand

We were supposed to leave on Saturday, but because of a camp-site mix-up we had to leave on Friday, so we only stayed two nights, and honestly the campground was so awesome and the kids did so well I think I could have stayed 2-3 more nights and been fine.

So Friday we cleaned up camp and went to Mission Beach for the day. We weren't allowed to go into the water because there had been a shark sighting earlier that day, but that didn't stop us from having a good time. The kids ran and played on the shore and Owen and Kaelyn had a blast throwing their boats into the water and watching the waves bring them back.

It's so cute to see how much these two love each other. I hope they continue to be close for a long time.

Since we had to come home a day early, and no one really wanted the fun to end, the Duncan's came to our house Friday night and stayed the night. We got a babysitter for the 4 kids so we could go out to dinner, to kind of reward ourselves for accomplishing a successful camp-out with 4 children. After dinner we put the kids to bed and played games...so fun!!

It was a fun adventure that I am totally up for doing again. Campland might just be a new family summer tradition!