We went camping....

We went camping this Saturday. And by camping I mean, we went to a state park that's about 20 minutes away from our house. There are lots of way cooler places to camp around here. We do live in Colorado after all, but we chose this place because it is close to home. And because they have bathrooms. I don't pee in the woods. I don't consider myself a diva or someone that's not comfortable being outside and camping, but I can't pee anywhere other than on a toilet....like....nothing comes out. I physically can't do it. So, a campground is a more appropriate choice for us. We weren't sure how it would pan out, so we wanted to stay close to home. We got there around 2:30, after Jackson woke up from his nap. We decided where the tent was going to go and started setting up. After a while, Jackson and I left Eric to do the setting up and we headed to the playground. When Jackson's little face was so red from being hot, we headed back to the camp site to find Eric sitting under a pine tree in the shade. This is where we all hung out until it started cooling off a bit, listening to music and relaxing. Once it got a little cooler and we got hungry, we decided to start a fire. In the past, we've had a heck of a time starting a fire, so I got a duraflame log to get things going this time. It worked. We had a great fire going and put the hot dogs on our big fire forks and started cooking. The hot dogs were looking a little.....ummmmm....black, though. Like, not charred in a fire kind of black, but covered in chemicals kind of black. Eric insisted it was fine and devoured 2 hot dogs. I ate a bite and thought it tasted funny. I gave Jackson one bite too and decided to google "cooking over duraflame logs". My search told me that it can actually be poisonous to cook over duraflame logs. Whoops! I gave Jackson a cold hot dog and a ton of Doritos for dinner instead. After poking the duraflame log and breaking it up a bunch, I finally got our fire to be only wood and not duraflame and we made smores and popcorn over the fire. By around 9:00, Jackson was kept saying "night-night" so we put him in his pajamas and tried to lay him down in the tent in his new Buzz Lightyear sleeping bag. By 10:30, all he was doing was screaming in the tent, obsessing over every little thing. He would hear a car and yell "CAR! CAR! CAR! CAR!" over and over. He wanted to play with the flashlight so he yelled "LIGHT! LIGHT! LIGHT! LIGHT!". This continued for quite some time until I finally threatened him with going home if he didn't knock it off. Then he started screaming "HOME! HOME! HOME! HOME!". FINE! WE ARE GOING HOME! Eric was practically asleep by this point and told me that he would sleep at the campsite while Jackson and I slept at home. I told him that he was going to wake up at the crack of dawn and we weren't so he's going to have to wait for us in the morning. He was okay with that.....at the time. Jackson and I drove home and I tried putting him to bed. It was well after midnight before he finally calmed down and fell asleep. I decided that since I had only had one bite of poisoned hot dog, Doritos, Oreos, Smores and popcorn all night I should have some healthy fruit before bed, so I had some maraschino cherries, right out of the jar, and a chocolate covered frozen banana. It was now officially August 1st, so I went on Facebook and checked everything out and finally fell asleep. I got a text from Eric around 7:00 the next morning saying that there is NO WAY Jackson would have made it through the night anyway because it was sweltering in the tent and really noisy all night long. Jackson slept until 10:00 in the morning and we headed back to the campsite to pick up Eric. Maybe we'll try camping again next year? Not in July?