The R-rated Family Camping Trip...

Ahhh... Family camping.  You have visions of hot dogs and S'mores, cozy campfires, filthy kids, the smell of pine trees and warm sleeping bags. 

Meanwhile your campsite neighbors have visions of 2 a.m. expletive-laced drinking games, loud sex, breakfast at noon, beer runs and more. loud. sex. 

Awesome.

Let me back up...

Fall 2010
 

To me, Dowdy Lake, near Red Feather, CO. is the equivalent of Heaven on Earth.  It is my favorite place to camp.  There are gorgeous views all around the lake, you can camp just feet from the water, there are rocks to climb, fish to catch, trails to stroll and so on and so on.  I have made it up here just about every year for the past 15 years or so.  It is only an hour away from home, and there is a small mercantile close by in case you forget anything.

 

This proximity and undoubted popularity is also it's downfall.  Seniors in motorhomes as well as families flock here.  But so does another element of society.  College kids.  Or at least - 20 somethings.  Many of them, that I have observed in too-close-for-comfort-camping-proximity, I believe, have never camped before.  The call of the wild, where these kids can let it all hang out, is just too enticing for some.  So, without any regard for their neighbors or Leave No Trace, they come to the mountains and thoroughly enjoy themselves.

 

I have, with maybe two exceptions, the unfortunate luck of an unpleasant experience with such individuals on every visit to this beautiful place.  Some memories are striking - as a nanny, I brought up three young children for a campout three years in a row.  Each time I had a run-in.  Young guys drinking and swearing until 2 am, just FEET away from our tent.  The last visit we had, I met the campground host when we arrived and informed him I would come knocking if there was a problem.  And, yes, at 1:30 in the morning I came knocking, and true to his word, he kicked the offenders OUT.  It is a long story, but a good one!

 

But this most recent visit, last weekend, blows any previous negative experience out of the water.  We had blocked out the weekend of the 20th for camping.  I don't know why I chose the weekend.  The two GOOD experiences were on weekdays, and that is what makes the difference.  I guess I forgot that bit, because I set aside this particular September weekend back in July.  As per usual, we arrived late... like set up camp in the dark late.  We wound up in the RV section, and our site was a $50/night DOUBLE FEE electrical site.  Whoops.  But it was night, hard to see, and we couldn't find any other open sites.  A neighbor down the way was out playing his mandolin and it was so beautiful to listen to, so it wasn't all bad.  And everybody in that area went to bed at 10pm.  Perfect!  But the next day, as I went down to pay for our second night (we had decided to stay put, rather than move everything) I spied another open site, right on the lake, in our favorite loop.  So we moved.  Now I know why that site had vacated....

 

So here we are, at gorgeous site #20.

 

 

 

See what I mean?  It is right on the water.  You can sit by the campfire (behind the table), watch the kids play by the water, or climb rocks (just to the right of the picture).  The bathroom is 100 ft. away, as well as the parking area.  Totally ideal.  This is my favorite loop.  There are five sites around the perimeter, and then two interior sites.

 

Let me back up again....

 

When we arrived the previous night, we set up our tent in the dark, had a quick campfire and roasted marshmallows and then went to bed.  As we went about our business, a few late stragglers were arriving and looking for sites as well.  Two cars in particular were practically racing around the different loops, looking.  You could see them and hear them as they circled and circled.  At about this time I had the little kids relatively settled, and Dean and Jordan went to go fill out a payment envelope for our site.  When they got back, Dean reported to me that the two cars had showed up at the payment area, and seemed totally confused as to what to do.  They asked him, "So how does this work?  Do we just pick one?  Do you know of any *secluded* sites?"  It was one guy from one car, and one girl from the other car.  I joked it must be a late-night tryst sort of thing...

 

So, come to find out, these same two cars arrived and parked in our area after we had set up in our second site, site #20.  I didn't see them when I had staked it out earlier.  If I had, I would have never moved.   It's not like I was totally focused on these people, but there were things you had no choice but to be exposed to.  When I had initially arrived, a bedraggled guy and girl were in their pjs, looking forlorn, stirring a smoking campfire at that site.  Then the others showed up.  Throughout the afternoon things just got weirder.  They all took a nap.  Then they got up.  They discussed their various drug escapades and juvenile delinquency for all to hear for the next few hours.  Two wandered over by the bathrooms and started madly making out.  What a romantic spot... just a couple feet away from stinky bathrooms.  It went on, and on, and on...  Later, Dean remarked that maybe they were high on Ecstasy.  A friend had told him (years ago) that the drug made you lose all inhibition like that..  Then they started a new campfire by using an entire roll of paper towels.  One guy made a big display of pulling off huge armfuls of towel and throwing it in the fire.  Idiots.

 

So - back to our family experience...

 

The kids fished and fished and fished.  Rylan caught her first fish ever, and so did Colin.  Jordan caught 10 in all.  I got to take a walk around the lake by myself AND read.  We had hot dogs, S'mores, cocoa and a nice fire to round out the evening.  How ever horrible this night was, I need to remember that we really did have a fantastic day.

 

 



 

So... nightfall comes, Colin falls asleep in his chair and the kids get cranky and tired.  Colin wakes up when Jordan pokes him, and fussed very loudly for a long, long time.  We struggle to get the kids in bed, clean up for the night, put the food in the car and tamp down the fire.  It is late, like 10:30 pm.  Another ridiculous display of paper towel flinging has begun as a spark-filled campfire grows 20 ft. away - it is time for more beer pong!!  Joy.  We crawl into bed, and the party is now revving up.  My head is on my pillow for barely 30 seconds before Colin wakes and begins to cry.  The neighbors are banging pots, digging through the coolers, shouting, laughing and carrying on.  Colin keeps crying.  Dean pulls him out of his bed and puts him between us, and he finally settles down.  The loud mayhem continues, but I drift off.  At 1 a.m., somebody hurts himself.. maybe a stubbed toe or something.  Every other word for the next half-hour is the F-word.  It is loud.  Beyond loud.  Now he's pissed about anything and everything.  He goes on and on...  I drift off again.  It is now 4 a.m.  I hear unmistakable grunting.  You've got to be kidding me.  Seriously?  It goes on for an HOUR.  Dean and I are awake the whole time, trying to decide what to do.  That's not all... as one pair is in the tent, grunting away.. the other pair and what I am sure is a third voice is still around the campfire, banging pots, digging in the cooler, and talking loudly.  I just can't wrap my head around this one.  Who in their right mind would do that?  Either party in this case?  I would be mortified!?!?  Then I smell the unmistakable smell of pot smoke.  I am itching for confrontation soooo bad at this point.  But these individuals are in a whole other class than previous parties I have delt with.  They are beyond approach.  Jordan stirs in his sleep with all the noise going on, and Rylan is talking in her sleep.  Dean has his iPhone on, and eventually gets a white noise app downloaded.  That really helped to drown out everything else.  But once you hear it, you can't not hear it.  At 6:25 the crows start up, I wake up and I immediately hear more grunting.  AGAIN??  wtf??

 

So - what is the best revenge for lost sleep?  Noise.  And lots of it!  I made about 10 trips back and forth to the water tap between 7:00 and 7:30.  That big boulder that was 10 feet away from their tents?  yeah, I may have accidently hit it with my pan, each and every time I walked past.   Dean and I had loud conversations.  Right by their tent.  We sent the kids to climb the rocks right by their camp site.  Our kids are not the quiet types.  Now don't worry about the other campers in the area - they were already up, so no - we weren't bothering anybody else.  They all looked as bleary-eyed as we did.  A lot of these campers are there to fish too, and early in the morning is the best time for that, so they are up anyway.

 

When these fine neighbors finally got up, the girls did the work of packing up and they left.  They never once acknowledged the entire time that anybody else was in earshot.  No eye contact, nothing...

 

We enjoyed our last hour of peace and quiet.  Almost every site had vacated.  That was when I had realized our sad mistake.  The other camping trips when it did go well?  Always in late September/Early October, and ALWAYS during weekdays.  We're homeschoolers, for goodness sake!!  We have the freedom to be flexible with our schedule!!





I have four kids..I have four kids..I have four kids..











 

I am a mathematical genius.  I routinely forget how to count.  This morning I took Jordan in for a quick appointment at the dermatologist.  They were upgrading their patient records system to a portable - laptop based system, (so five years ago) and needed to scan Jordan's medical insurance card again.  I dug through my wallet, only to discover that it is missing.  ??  That is weird since I almost never have to show our cards (save mine) to anybody.  The thing is, it took counting through the medical cards (I have mine and all the kids) repeatedly to figure it was missing in the first place.

And when I finally figured out it was missing, the thought "I have FOUR kids?" kept repeating in my mind.  I have had FOUR kids for the past three years and 235 days, and it only just creeps into my conscious thought now?  Not really, but the gravity of the situation has...

I am officially losing my mind.

On My Way..

 

 

 

So... I've been totally preoccupied lately.

 

 

To read about what I've been up to, go here.



Simple Woman's Daybook Entry

 

 

 

 



Outside my window...

 

 

A whole lotta this....  This picture was Thursday morning.  The rain started spitting on Tuesday, and then started to get down to serious business.  On Wednesday night, I got nervous.  The news on TV was pretty bad.  Boulder, CO, which is 45 min. SW of us was already witnessing catastrophic flooding.  I patrolled our three basement window wells on a frequent basis.  At 1 a.m. Dean and I donned our rain jackets and visited this drainage ditch behind our house.  (You can see our roof behind the spruce tree).  The water level was at about 4 ft. on that pole there.  See those bricks that line the backside?  The water was even with the third row of bricks down from the top - so it was over the front wall there, by that grey metal screen.  Once the water breeches this wall, there is nothing to hold the water back from our house.  The geniuses that graded our yard when the house was built directed the water toward the house.  Luckily there is also a slope that drains the water toward the left of the picture, where we are bordered by a street.  That is our only saving grace.

 

A friend posted that it seems like our little area of the Front Range is in a bubble - impervious to the death and destruction that is going on around us.  I feel like that too.  The images that we have seen are horrendous, and the mountain towns that are less than an hours' drive away are getting the worst of it.  Yet here, we can drive around (mostly), enjoy our dry basements and our running water and electricity.  The only complaint we have is that the bridges that connect the southern side or our city to the northern side have been closed periodically due to the dangerous flooding of the river and the stresses it places on the bridges.  Water isn't topping the bridges, but the flow rate is dangerously high at the moment.  The worst may yet come for us.  Today it is supposed to rain ALL day.  An upslope has parked a storm system directly above us, and won't budge any time soon.  We'll see what unfolds... For now we are counting our blessings, and I am ansy to get stuff off the basement floor.

 

 

I am thinking... about all of the displaced families and animals, and all of those who are still waiting rescue.

I am thankful... for the moisture, but this is such a deluge!  The weather forecaster said that if we were to convert the amount of moisture we have received in rain into snow, it would be the equivalent of 100 inches of snow.  We.  would. die.

 

 

From the Learning Rooms... Another good week, but we lost it at the end, with all of the rain.  Jordan and Rylan were supposed to take the fall MAPS testing at a district's testing location on Friday, but it got cancelled because the district closed the schools on Friday.  Rylan started a weekly art class on Tuesday, and really enjoyed it.  Owen has decided to give gymnastics another try, so his first class was on Tuesday as well.  Rylan looked wistfully at all of the girl gymnasts that were doing their classes and begged for her chance as well.  I looked at her like she was crazy.  She is already doing jazz, tumbling AND ballet!!  To her credit, she has mentioned that she has wanted to on at least a weekly basis for the past three years.  So.  On Thursday afternoons, Rylan and Owen will be taking their respective gymnastics classes at the same time.  A scheduling win for me, but a loss for the pocketbook, and another. damn. trip. to. Loveland.  :(

 

 

In the kitchen...  Nothing fantastic going on there, I'm afraid...

I am wearing...  Standard blogging attire.  ;)

 

I am creating... A household binder.  An organizational wonder that would make a few of you gag or roll your eyes, so I'll stop right now.  But it makes me happy.

I am going... Maybe to the store once more.. although we are pretty well stocked up, in anticipation of a run on milk, eggs and bread by those who fear the end of times has come.

 

I am wondering... About our Girl Scout meeting we have on Wednesday, which is on the other side of the river.  Hope the bridges are open by then.

I am reading... I opened Cold Mountain the other day, and read the first couple of chapters.  Not really drawn in...  I did hear about an interesting book from a friend last week called A Thousand White Women.  I am going to see if I can find it at the library.

 

In the garden...  Water?  I did pick some rhubarb early last week to make a strawberry-rhubarb crisp.

 

I am hoping... What everyone is hoping for now...

 

I am looking forward to... this coming weekend, if things dry out this week, when we have planned to go camping.

I am learning...  About a fun way to go internet geocaching.  Pick a famous landmark - anywhere in the world - and get it's exact mapping coordinates.  Come up with some questions about it (use Wikipedia).  Send your teen on a geocaching excursion to locate the site by it's coordinates, answer the questions and copy and paste a picture of it.  Pretty neat stuff.  Thanks to PLATO science for the idea.  (I really need to write up a review about PLATO... long overdue!)

 

 

I am hearing... Rain.  Yesterday it was endless helicopter traffic - Black Hawks and Chinooks - as they ferried supplies and did rescues up and down the Front Range.  Today they can't fly, due to low visibility.  For a lot of these canyons, there is no way in or out except by air since the roads are completely washed away.

 

Around the house... There are 15 boxes of flooring waiting to go in.  Dean needs to get the underlayment today and then we can get started on finishing the other half of the ground floor.  After several long months of a halfway finished project, we can finally begin!  We also met with the first of a few house painting contractors to get price quotes for painting the house.  We only have a few more weeks to get this done!  Also, the part for the washer came on Tuesday and Dean put Humpty Dumpty back together again.  I'm glad I can drop the washing-in-the-bathtub-business - we were about to run out of towels!

I am pondering... how I am going to get my walk in.  I'm tired of soggy walks.

 

One of my favorite things...  Well... rainy days.  But not six of them in a row.  I could not live in Seattle.

A few plans for the rest of the week... Normally, I would say violin, jazz, boy scouts, Dr. appt., art, tumbling, Lego robotics, homeschool PE class, girl scouts, ballet, gymnastics, Lego robotics and fitting homeschooling in and around all of those things, but I am not really sure.  It all depends on various road closures.

 

Here is a picture for thought I am sharing...





This is the storm water retention area that is across the street from our house.  The night before it was an additional two feet deep.  Owen (in the yellow rain jacket) was able to walk across it, though the water came up to his chest.  Normally this area is dry and neighborhood kids use it to play football or soccer in.

 

To read more entries and visit a variety of other blogs, go here...



Simplicity Parenting: Filtering

 

 



Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and more Secure Kids
by Kim John Payne, M.Ed.



 

 

The Stress Bath

 

 

So... you're sitting in the parent's waiting area while you wait for your child to do their weekly XYZ class.  Or you are at the park.  Or you are at the library story time.  You are feeling good...happy with the world, even!  Then THAT parent shows up... you know the one...  The one who loves to rant and rave and worry about the current sensational news stories.  The one that is certain that all things plastic, Monsanto, Red dye #40 and non-gluten/dairy/sugar-free will kill you.  The one that is certain that she gets the raw deal.  The one that is the constant victim.  The constant complainer.  The one with the child that could do better in the world if they weren't unfairly victimized either.  You like this person well enough, but you consistently find that after you spend just five minutes listening to her, you feel depressed, worried and guilty.  You, my friend, have just been drenched in a Stress Bath. 

 

I came across this term, 'stress bath', in a chapter (see book above) that Dr. Payne wrote, about filtering out the adult world.  I love this term - he hit it right on the money.  That is exactly what it feels like.  You feel like you have been completely covered in doom and gloom.  It's icky.  You literally want to listen to a Raffi CD on endless repeat and shower yourself in glitter to take the edge off.  So much for enjoying yourself at any point in time for the rest of the day... now you are too worried about all the evils that are lurking anywhere and everywhere.

 

And it's not just the face-to-face conversations.  It's the friend that sends you every email attachment that describes every danger you may not be aware off.  It is your Facebook feed.  It is the variety of news apps, magazine articles, 20/20 episodes, the nightly news... we're all going to suffer some horrible malady unless we do "this" or "that".  Seriously.  Go to your Facebook feed and count up the negative postings vs. the positive ones for the past 24 hours.  Who wins?  The only negatives that don't really 'count' are the ones in which a friend shares a personal story of loss or sadness (not a story about a stranger that is supposed to tug at your heart...)  I think personal stories are important - that is how we maintain connections.

 

I am so totally guilty of posting the negatives.  Around election time, I was in a backlash 'zone' with the astounding number of vitriolic conservative postings that were filling my feed.  I got wise and just bounced a few of the offending 'friends' from my feed.  And there they remain...  Sometime after the beginning of this year I made a concerted effort to keep things on the positive side.  I've slipped many a time, but I am aware of the friends that do the same, and I am grateful for their little rays of sunshine that light up my feed here and there.  And then last night happened...  A few more 'friends' got bounced.  Something about the eve of Patriot Day made the Obama haters circle in a feeder frenzy on Facebook.  Implicating Obama with Bin Laden and 9-11?  Buh-bye.  Obama is going to destroy the nation by weighing his options with what to do with Syria?  Out you go.  I save my sanity and my mood by filtering out the vitriol.  I totally get that I need to embrace everyone's opinion and that there is real value in that...but the posts that insult our president just because it is some sort of bizarre form of entertainment..?  You aren't expressing anything other than you would rather 'share' than spend a couple more seconds rethinking about the message you are sending.

 

But I digress...This post is about filtering the messages we are exposing our kids to day after day - and very apropos on this day of remembrance of 9/11.  Children Learn What They Live.  If you spew forth constant negativity and victimization stories, your children will do the same.  If you are listening to or watching something in front of your kids, they are listening to.  I am an NPR junkie, but when I step back and listen to it from the young child's perspective, maybe they shouldn't be hearing about the horrors of what is happening in Syria.  Or in the House of Representatives.  Or on the streets of Boston.  That's when I turn it off.  And then there's TV - seeing the twin towers in flames, people screaming in the streets and so forth.  Older teens, who should know the history - yes, they should be keenly aware of worldly events.  But not young children.  They can't process it.  They see pictures of the terrorists, and learn to fear - even hate, without the distinction that not all the individuals that populate that part of the world are like that.  The constant barrage of fear, hate, fear, hate, fear, hate on any of the national news channels (seriously - spend just 5 minutes on FOX news - if you can stand it) equates the mother of all stress baths.  Do you know what that does to your psyche?  Let alone your children's psyche?

Do yourself a favor and switch it off - especially today.  Go for a walk, breathe deep and focus on the good - and don't forget to involve your children too.  Cultivate the more positive friendships in your life.  Listen to the news if you must - but when you are alone, or switch it off the second it takes a turn.  Get off Facebook - or at least weed out the friends who aren't very friendly after all.  Filter the messages that come to your eyes and ears - and your children's as well.  You will feel the difference.  Dr. Payne related a story in which the parents did that very thing - they turned if off.  And in a matter of days, their young son stopped having trouble at school, grew less and less agitated and stopped having nightmares.  You have to remember that even though you and your child listen to the same story on the news, you are processing it with different filters and prior experiences.



Up to my ankles in suds...

photo credit

 

 

Yes we homeschool, so we kind of buck the cultural norms in that regard.  But we haven't relinquished our love of electricity, plastic bottles full of corrosive laundry detergent, liberal - even, dare I say, wasteful water usage, or a love of all things fabric softener.  Gain.  sniff.  ahhhhh.

 

 

Three years ago, we plunked down an obscene, OBSCENE, I SAY!, amount of money on a Samsung front loader washer/dryer combo.  After one week of use, they were no longer my favorite.  Even if they were shiny.  The washer took a ridiculous amount of time to do one, paltry load.  The dryer's magical damp 'sensor' wasn't so magical.  Three years have passed, and my disdain has only increased.  Whenever we travel to my inlaws and make use of their washer/dryer (on a daily basis during our visit because we have filthy kids...), I sit in awe.  I love my MIL's machines.  I want to ditch the suitcases, the children and the back seat and just take the machines home with me.  j/k   well...almost.

 

For the past month or so, our washer has completely under-performed.  As in... "I don't really feel like draining out all of this filthy water, or spinning or anything, so I am just going to sit here and beep at you every 30 seconds... all. night. long.  Out running errands?  Okay, I'll just entertain the dog and cat with the beeping.  I'm sure they will enjoy that.  Don't worry.  I'm sure you won't mind if your clothes fester in dirty water for a few hours..."

 

Samsung?  You suck.  So does the cheap plastic parts you put in your machines.  For the sheer pain of plunking down $1600 on one single machine, I expect better.  BETTER!

 

I am talking about the drain pump.  And the MAJOR PITA factor involved in getting to the drain hoses.  Which were caked in sludge.  I half expected to find a wayward penny.  Or a lego.  Or a button.  Nope.  Just a faulty part.

 

So, this past Sunday morning, I found my washing machine and all of its 40 respective parts, spread out all over the upstairs hallway.  Dean must have been busy.  Believe me when I say that stepping on metal screws hurts worse that those funky-shaped legos that stick out at all angles... you know the ones.

 

And the part that needs to be replaced?  Well, it should arrive sometime later this week.  We don't have enough clothes to last that long.  So my options are: stink.  No thank you.  Go naked.  again...pass.  Go to a Laundromat.  The last time I did that was in New Orleans when we vacationed there in 2010.  That actually wasn't sooo bad, once I got over my fear.  Dean took the kids for ice cream, and I washed and folded and watched my first episode ever of CSI on a little TV that was suspended from the ceiling.  Then the witchy owner-lady killed the TV 10 minutes before closing time, and no amount of eye daggers was going to convince her to turn it back on.  Another option would be to haul the dirty clothes to my mom's.  Nice idea, but I really don't have that kind of time, and I don't want to be a burden.  So... what option is left??

 

Ah-ha!!  The bathtub.  Bathtub you say?  Google it.  There is a whole (very scary) world out there of DIYers that has turned the act of washing your clothes out by hand into a modern-day art form.  It is culturally confusing however, to Google images of "Washing clothes by hand in bathtub", and see gleeful Preppers washing away in their plastic tubs mixed in with images of women and men slapping clothes on rocks next to a dirty stream. 

 

So, back to me (since it is all about me), I've got it down to a science...

 

1. Fill tub to about 2-3" deep with water - the temp depends on what you are washing.

2. Add liquid detergent while it is filling.  I also add softener too, because I am too lazy to do that separately.

3. Dump in clothes.  I limit myself to about 15 items, give or take.

4. Get them wet, step in and swish around with your feet just a bit to work in the soap.

5. Let sit for 10 minutes or so.  Or until you remember that you left clothes in the tub in the first place..

6. Get back into tub and get a 10 min. cardio workout.  Dance, stomp, swish, pretend you are an Olympic speed skater - careful - water can slosh!  Do the Twist!

7. Drain.

8. Rinse.

9. Drain.

10. Rinse.

11. Get all of the clothes into a big pile at the back of the tub, and then place your hands against the front of the tub and puuuusssshhhh.  Do a couple wall push-ups.  Then puuuuussshhh some more.  Squeeze as much of the water out as you can.  Then....get the Salad Spinner!!!! 

12. Spin each item.  A mop bucket with a squeezer-thingy can work too.

13.  Either hang up to dry, or throw in dryer.  (thank goodness that is still working, at least)

 

Done! 

 

Bonbon anyone?