The Seahawks Camping Adventure Part One

See, I didn't take your title, Lizzie...

So, I've never been camping before, you see. At least, not before this weekend, and not ever any place but in a tent in the back yard a couple years ago. But the concept doesn't frighten me, as it does my dad...so when Sarah, Lizzie and their family asked our family, Chandler and Alec's family, Coach and his family, Hannah and Noah's family, and Nathan and Rachel's family to all take a big camping adventure to Jordan Lake, I jumped at the opportunity! After all, what could be more fun than spending a weekend out of doors with some of my favorite members of my favorite swim team?

The thing is, I decided this would be a once in a lifetime opportunity...and liked the idea so much, I decided to skip the filming for the 48 Hour Film Project film this year (which was to take place on Saturday and which I had been looking forward to ever since the one we did last year). Yeah, so that's a big thing. And what if it turned out I hated camping? I'd be stuck there, I guess. But, I reasoned, how could I hate this? But I had to admit, I wasn't really sure what I was getting myself into...

So, Friday it was just Marck and me heading up (down? across?) 64 on our way to Jordan Lake. Mom had not felt like coming, Robert had some homeschool newspaper kickoff party thing, and as I mentioned before, my dad rather dislikes camping. Marck almost didn't come because he didn't know how things would go without him there to care for Mitchie-Poo.

After much confusion about where we were actually supposed to be going (even a lot of communication sometimes renders itself almost useless), and driving around trying to get to wherever that happened to be at the time (and I, for a change, was usually right and Marck was usually wrong...), both the H's and us arrived at the same campsite at the same campground!

Immediately, there was the small trauma of one misplaced sandal on the part of David. Eventually, though, those of us who were not missing a sandal self-absorbedly (is that a word?) began to pitch tents. Or, okay, Lizzie and I pitched tents. Everyone else sat around OR unloaded the Suburban (they were not missing sandals). Well, Marck helped us pitch the girl's tent. And, when we drafted volunteers to assist in lifting the poles and hooking them into to the little hook-things, we received a little assistance. After the initial pitching of said girl's tent, Marck abandoned us to Whoknowswhere Land, and left Lizzie and me to pathetically attempt to put on the rainfly. After we finally found the loop-pocket thing which we were supposed to stick a little pole into, the rest went on pretty easily, and we stood back to admire our handiwork, for just a moment...and then went to go pitch the much larger boy's tent. Again, we only were helped when it came time to lift poles, and were then (AGAIN) left to do everything else ourselves. That is, until Joel and Marck came over and Joel started going through the accessories and explaining to Marck about the "cupholders that hang from the sky." That doesn't count. Finally, Nathan and Rachel got there, and immediately Nathan asked what he could do to help. We told him to hammer in the stakes. He did. We were happy.

Skipping by a bit, there was a bit of a debate as to whether the M's were coming or not. We already knew that Hannah, Noah and company weren't coming, and as for Coach and fam we wouldn't really know till they actually got there or didn't get there. Apparently Sean had two baseball games in Smithfield, one Friday night and one Saturday morning, so if they came, they would only be able to come for Saturday night. Eventually the M's did show up (thank goodness, otherwise we'd have to have hotdogs for breakfast), and soon after their arrival, Lizzie and I were so tired from tent pitching, we went to unroll our sleeping bags and take a nap. That was a little difficult because of the constant banter from outside, especially Alec's very loud and pronounced exclaimation, "Mr. H, you are SO unoriginal!"

So that night we roasted hotdogs (after the boys took a while debating about how to make a fire, and trying to chop down the small pine trees in the little woods next to us), and after that, we made s'mores. Joel kept taking whole Hershey bars and putting them on his signature giant s'mores he was making. I had two s'mores with the normally accepted portion of chocolate on them. The majority of us managed to get quite sticky, and had to go wash up before Lizzie, Rachel, Nathan and I played some more of our Hearts game.

After I got stuck with the Queen of Spades three times in a row, we decided we'd continue the game the next day, and went to bed. Rachel (of course) didn't want to sleep, so I told her a couple bedtime stories. One was about a 13-year-old adventerous camper named Rachel who counted sheep and promptly fell asleep. The other one was the sequel, which was about ANOTHER 13-year-old adventerous camper named Rachel who heard the first story and was suddenly inspired to do the same thing as that girl in the story did. Then we all decided we would all pretend we were asleep, and see what happened........

And that was the most exciting and eventful part one! Stay tuned for more!!

~Jessica