Camp Meeting

So. I went to camp meeting this year.

I'm still trying to figure out just how my best friend talked me into this, but she did. I think it had something to do with talking me up on the cabins they have sprinkled throughout the campsite and how she'd bring her little a/c unit for the cabin window, and bring her little dorm fridge and how we'd sleep every night on real beds in absolute comfort.

At least that was the plan.

Except that you don't get into camp meeting on a wing and a prayer these days. Now it's all done with a random lottery via computer program or something like that. So we filled out our application: Pick #1: cabin with mattresses (some cabins you actually have to BYO mattresses! By the end of the week we were totally regretting not putting that as our second choice). Pick #2: an RV space with electricity.

Well, we thought, we'll get the cabin, look at all the kids we're bringing! They'll take pity on us and put us up in a cabin. And if not - we'll borrow a camper from someone and STILL spend the week in relative comfort. As long as there's electricity there will be an A/C unit!

Ah, yes, optimism. I'm not usually that optimistic and now I remember why.

We spent the week in a tent.

Our first night went something like this:

1. Lay down on air mattress in the tent with 3 year old. Try to get 3 year old to sleep. Give up around 9 and leave her there with Auntie while I try to settle the other two kids into their cots in Grandma's camper.

2. Lay down on couch in camper and try not to fall asleep while 4 and 6 year olds laugh, giggle, jump around, cry, beg to sleep with me in tent, fight, etc, until 10 when I give up and hand them over to grandparents to deal with. They are far too excited to sleep and I am already too tired to try and read them to sleep. I can barely keep my eyes open!

3. Lay down on air mattress in sweltering hot tent and fall promptly to sleep.

3. Wake up at midnight with my rear end on the ground, thanks to slowly deflating air mattress. Stuff extra pillow under hips.

4. Wake up at 1 am with back on the ground, hips still on the pillow, and head still on the pillow. Attempt to get up. Finally successfull after several VERY awkward tries and several bouts of giggles from watching air mattress flop my poor sleeping 3 year old around at my every movement.

5. Grab pillow, blanket, and phone and head over to the other tent where there is a twin size air mattress calling my name. Leave 3 year old with Auntie.

6. Flop on air mattress and immediately feel a bug crawling over arm. Hop (ha ha ha, as much as a 7 month pregnant woman CAN hop) up, flip on phone to find an earwig in bed. Flash phone around rest of the tent to find WAY more bugs than necessary everywhere. That's what I get for letting the kids play in there during the day, I guess.

7. Flop back on air mattress and go to sleep anyway.

8. Wake up to phone ringing. Find phone. It is Auntie, in the other tent, calling to say that 4 year old in the camper is awake and needing her mommy. Retrieve 4 year old, bring her in tent with me, and go back to sleep.

9. Wake up at 6:30 thanks to bright-eyed and bushy-tailed 4 year old zipped into same tent as me bouncing off the walls.

10. Somewhere at unknown intervals, make 3 trips down the hill to the porta-potty.

And that was just the first night.

Sometime the next day I tried to log into my facebook account through Raini's phone. You know, since it has this handy-dandy little keyboard to use instead of the tedious predictive text stuff I have to do on my phone. I got this error message that said something about "we don't recognize this location, therefore you must go log into your account from your home computer in order to restore your account" or some such nonsense.

So I tried logging into fb with MY phone. Surely it will recognize that I've done it from that specific location a million times, right?! No. Since I'd already tried from an unknown location I couldn't go back and log in from my phone until I'd gone home to my HOME COMPUTER. Um. HELLO?! If I were AT home, I'd be logging in FROM home, now wouldn't I?

And then I lost my phone charger anyway. It is lost somewhere in the clutches of the camp meeting vortex where all the lost sunglasses, ID bracelets, and flip flops go.

Ah well. It's not like I really needed to use my phone much or be on fb much at camp meeting anyway, though I was tempted several times to text Raini in the same tent as me in an attempt to communicate while still being quiet enough to keep the little ones asleep. Mostly we just waved at each other over the babies and went back to reading until it was too dark to see.

Our other camp meeting adventures included having the 3 year old lock herself into the porta-potty, which she is now completely terrified by, a big-girl-panties-gone-wrong incident at a birthday gathering that had me leaving the festivities and heading straight for the bath house for a quick shower for both of us, a visit from a little snapping turtle, and a good, soaking rainstorm that really made those middle of the night trips to the porta-potty extra fun.



We did have a lot of fun, though, too. We had banana ice-cream cones nearly every day (which are just simply frozen bananas shoved through this cool machine that turns them into soft-serve and were amazingly good!), made lots of new friends, enjoyed the classes, rode the tram as much as possible, and caught up with old friends we hadn't seen in years and years.

And in between, we walked. We walked a lot. Enough for me to have lost a pound since my last appointment 3 weeks ago.

I think we plan to go back next year. Even if we have to do the whole tent thing again! I'm still hoping for a cabin, though, even if I have to tie 3 mattresses on top of my car to do it.