Happy Campers!

My Mother may disown me after this post.

We spent Monday and Tuesday "camping" at Cherry Hill. It's probably the tamest variation on the word "camping" but the kids are in love and there are clean showers and bathrooms, so who's complaining here?
We were completely and thoroughly worn out by the end of day 1 since my kids have absolutely zero need to lay down and recharge their batteries, although we tried to trick them into it several times. After a full day of swimming they finally passed out at 10 p.m. and were little angelic creatures in happy camping heaven. But they are young. They will learn that there isn't really such thing.

Andrew and I climbed in the tent and lay down for a long summers slumber on our comfy cushy air mattress. We knew it was perfectly proportioned with air since the air cradled our limbs up high, but the trunk of our bodies sunk cozily into the rock earth. Perfect. We had only gone through two inconsolable toddler night terrors when the rain started.
That could have been soothing if we didn't feel it inside our tent just as if we were outside. Now we have all three kids awake and crying. Andrew jumps up off the air mattress which of course flops me flat on the ground and he flies out of the tent. In just his underwear of course. I'm whisper-shouting at the kids to take cover under their sleeping bags while their Dad is pantless outside yelling to his brother to help get the tarp on the tent.
His helpful older brother walks by and just pulls down Pete's drawers then continues walking. Let's hope there were no witnesses to that. So then I hear Andrew (re-drawered) flailing outside with the tarp shouting a few random "help!'s" out there for anyone else in the family. You might be wondering why I wasn't outside helping. Clearly I would have been, but the baby needed to be covered with a blanket so as not to get wet.
His bro Adam comes to the rescue and they get it secured within a few minutes. Andrew makes it back inside and falls back on the mattress teeter-tottering me slightly airborne. I laugh at my knight-in-shining-underarmor and tell him thanks. As we settle back into our sleeping bags we look up and notice the tarp is covering everything except for directly over our foreheads.
We spent the next few minutes silently enduring the slow drips above our eyebrows. Then we had a breakthrough:
"Andrew"
"Yep"
"I think I hate camping"
"You know what?"
"what?"
"I think I've always hated camping"

Then the mattress squeaked loudly while he tried to adjust to rolling over, sending me to a rock hard landing.

The relief is tangible. The thought of no more air mattresses and even less tents makes my heart happy. Just glad we found this out about ourselves now. Although there is a big stigma about non-campers. That they're wimpy. This is why it's been so hard for me to come to this conclusion for so long.

It's time to embrace my inner wimp. My name is Jodi, and I hate camping!

The End