Camping

I am pretty sure that some of you are shocked to see camping and highlights in the same sentence used by yours truly, but shockingly enough, I did have a good time. James rented out and entire campground for all of our friends to enjoy. The kids had a blast getting positively filthy (except for their hands which I continually had them soak in antibacterial soap), playing in the river, and throwing water balloons at mom (dad thought that was funny, mom, not so much). Alyssa caught her first fish ( a huge one) about 5 minutes into fishing, so her expectations are high for the next fishing trip. I read my People magazine during the whole fishing expedition. I do not fish. Things were going really well until a massive thunderstorm hit that night. Try to imagine being in a tent in a torrential downpour, with enough thunder to shake the ground. Now imagine that scenario with 14 children all under the age of 7 dealing with the thunder throughout the campground. Nothing says a goodnight sleep with children screaming in terror throughout the night! Needless to say everybody left early the next morning. EXCEPT FOR THE BLACKWOOD's. Ohh no. James planned for 4 nights, and so we are going to stay for 4 nights. The thunder and lightning did not bother me, nor the animal noises. Nothing bothered me until we were all alone the last night, in the wilderness (well, we were parked right next to the highway, but that kind of takes away from the story), by ourselves. Alone. We were settling down for the night when I told James that he had to put our campfire completely out because I was scared that it was going to start a forest fire (again, I would not describe where we were staying as a forest, but in my defense, there were trees). He tried to explain that it had rained for 8 hours straight the night before, but I was not having it, so he had to douse (am I spelling that right?) the fire until there was no ember in sight. So then we get into the tent and I suddenly realized that if there was no fire, animals may come and try to get into our tent or campground. I told James he needed to start another fire, and he explained to me, as calmly as he could, that everything was wet, so there would be no fire that night. As I am cuddling in to the bed (yes, I had him buy me a raised bed for our tent, not just an air mattress), I begin to hear noises. I became convinced, no joke, convinced that there was somebody out in our campground coming to get us. Has your mind ever played tricks on you like that? I have never in my life (well, at least while I was sober) have my mind convincing me of things that were not there. All of a sudden, I hear a twig snap and wake James up (for the 4th time in 20 minutes) and tell him there is an assassin outside coming to get us. My usually supportive husband who was a little more than inebriated looked at me with disdain and said:
"An assassin? An assassin" Who hired an assassin to come get the Blackwood's during their camping trip?"
Well his comments did nothing for me, so I sent him out to go check on things. He came back in, finding nothing, and attempted to go back to sleep. Needless to say, we were up by 5 am and out of there with no sleep at all. Oh yeah, my kids covered with the grime of dirt mixed in with sun tan lotion, mixed in with bug spray, mixed with river water got into the car and than Jimmy threw up. The more I think about it now, the more I have decided that actually, no, I do not like camping.