This weekend was the Hippymom Fall Festival. Much in the manner of an SCA event, I packed the car with far more clothes and food than we’d actually need and then drove 250 miles. The boys were back and forth over whether they wanted to camp until we got there, then the verdict was positive. There were gravel pits. That kept the kids busy for hours. I should just put a gravel pit in my backyard with some trowels and buckets, and I’d never have to buy another toy.
We stayed in a cabin – excuse me, kabin – with my hanai sister Melia and her kids. They all got along very well as usual, and despite having two adults and six children in a tiny kabin, it went pretty swimmingly. A good time seemed to be had by all, and once again I’ll have a story to tell our collective twins when they are teenagers about their childhood nudity together. Nothing makes teenagers shudder more than the idea that they once bathed together and even went to the bathroom in front of each other. Parenting win.
The weather was… humid. It was so humid, in fact, that we needed an awning/fly up over the picnic table (piknik? There seems to be no letter C in the KOA universe) to keep the food dry. It was frickin’ cold all day Saturday too. So we did very little except jump on the Jumping Pillow (aha, no K in there) and watch the kids dig in the gravel pits. Melia’s oldest, the Talker, is a right little pyro and disproved the theory that the male of the species cannot do two things at once by building a fire AND monologuing simultaneously. He should be a superhero/villain, his monologuing ability is that impressive. All the other kids mostly wanted to put leaves on the fire, so quite a large portion of the day our fire was more smoke than actual flame, but that didn’t seem to bother anyone. I think the only food that was really successfully cooked over it was s’mores, so that was okay.
I had hoped to go check out the surrounding area and see the national park we were kamped right next to, however between the rain humidity and the kids, I never got out of the Kampground. We had fun though. I bought a West Virginia magnet, so all was well. We stopped at Potomac Mills’ LEGO store on the way home, and I bought a box of 700 LEGOs (clearly the kamping made me lose my mind, because it seemed a good idea up until they were spread out all over my dining room floor) so the kids were happy.
I’ve nearly got all the laundry finished from this weekend, and soon will be vacuuming the car out. Coming home from a trip is always so much more work than getting ready for one. And so much less appealing.
