A Time for Camping

And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed. ~ Luke 5:16

It's no mystery to us why Jesus would go into the wilderness to pray and get away from everything. It's so peaceful in the wilderness! We kinda live in the woods. We have neighbors and we're about 15 minutes from all our needs as far as gas and groceries go but what I really love about our house is that it's peaceful out here. Our neighbors are close but not too close and there's no heavy traffic to deal with. I don't think I could ever live in a city or even in a neighborhood where the houses are really close together and you don't have much privacy. 

Jena in her pack n play in
the tent!

All the kids minus 2 that
were sleeping

So when the idea came up among some of our friends that we all go camping together I wasn't resistant because I don't like to be outdoors in nature it was because I've been saying I don't want to go camping with kids in diapers. Just something about sleeping in a tent with so many little ones did not appeal to me. I wanted to wait till all the kids were a little older. But everyone assured me it would be fine because we'd all be there to help each other out so we agreed to go. We went to White Lake Campground in Tamworth, NH. What a great campground! It has a great lake that is nice and shallow for awhile for little kids, a huge beach area with picnic tables and canoes and paddle boats you can rent. It also has a really nice playground with two sections for younger and older kids. We were 4 families with 12 kids combined, the oldest being 7 and the youngest being about 9 months and all the kids played so well together. The first night was rough because not only was it pouring with thunder and lightning but Jena also cried most of the night so she and I got about 2 hours of sleep. The next night though all our kids slept very well. We all planned our own meals but we took all the picnic tables from our 4 sites and made one big "mess hall" at one campsite so we could do all our cooking and eating together. This worked out really well. My only regret is that we didn't plan a longer trip. It's a lot of work for only a weekend. It was so much fun that we decided we're definitely doing this next year, only next time for 4 days. 

Will was supposed to be napping but when Ben
went over to our site to get something he found Will
like this trying to see what was going on! Haha!