Camping...embrace the unexpected 🏕️

Go camping, they say. It’ll be fun, they say. Well “they” we right. The kids were well behaved (for the most part) and my marriage is still in-tact.

Our trip to Prince Edward Island started with me giving my husband the wrong directions to the campground of the same name, just in the wrong town. Luckily, we were only a 38 minute drive away in the same direction and it gave us a good laugh. It just resulted in our kids asking 1894 more times when we'd be there (sorry kids, my bad).

The tent set up went well and we were happy to have everything done before the rain started (more on that shortly). The tarp gave us the most grief because of the high winds but we got it done. Also, our tent is big and the kids were happy to have their own space. We left briefly for my son's soccer game which marked the team's first win of the tournament.

When we got back to the campground, the real fun began. The wind was crazy and the tent poles holding the tarp kept blowing over and the tarp grommets were ripping where we had it tied down. Finally, my husband decided to nail it directly to the ground and park our truck's rear tires on top to keep it in place. Our tent looked like an igloo but it served its purpose. We were happy to have the tarp secured, only to realize our air mattress had a hole in it. My husband ran to the nearest Walmart to get us this new one, which ended up giving us a much more comfortable sleep (also super convenient with its built-in pump).

The weather really started to get bad around 8pm. It rained harder than I can remember in recent memory and the thunder & lightning was incredible. With each flash our tent lit up like a Christmas tree and made me anxiously anticipate the loud boom of thunder that followed. My daughter was very upset and cried about wanting to go home over and over again. As much as I can complain about the kids and their technology on any given day, I was very happy for the campground's wifi this weekend. We finally got settled into bed and everyone, except me, slept through.

I might have gotten one hour of broken sleep all night. Between the wind, thunder, lightning, my husband's snoring and the heaviest downpour ever, I couldn't sleep for the life of me. At 5am I woke my husband by laughing hysterically, due to pure exhaustion or the absolute shock that the rain was still pounding on the tent hours after starting (see attached video). He just shook his head, snickered and told me to go to sleep before he started snoring not 30 seconds later. Just as I finally started to doze, the kids in a tent close to us started screaming at one another over and over again, which ruined my hope of getting any sleep at all. I was very thankful for the tarp because at least we stayed dry. The clean showers and my yogurt & granola breakfast that morning were definitely the highlights before heading to soccer.

Soccer went very well with two more wins, sending the boys to the finals to take place on Sunday afternoon. Saturday night we had a great time socializing with our friends and the kids played hard until after Midnight. Knowing we had to get up early on Sunday to check out wasn't ideal but we had fun and that's what camping is all about. I did sleep that night, thank god!

The boys played in the championship game on Sunday and clinched the very well-deserved gold medal in a 7-2 victory. Though we got home later than expected, due to a scheduling change at the soccer fields, it was a hot, sunny & beautiful afternoon.

In the end, I would definitely do it all over again (maybe without the thunderstorm) and already can't wait for next year. The kids thanked us for the trip and said they had the best time ever.

My recommendation for camping: take ear plugs and try your best to embrace the unexpected.