Camping with Cocoa

We camped again this weekend.
Same campground, same campsite, but we came alot more prepared.

We had an enormous amount of tarps.

We had a tarp for Diana and Beth's tent. We had a tarp for our tent and Bonnie's tent. We had a tarp for the wood, the picnic table, and for a spot close enough to the fire to feel like we were still camping (but not close enough for it to set our shelter aflame).

And again, it rained. Almost all night. With my head buried deep in my sleeping bag, I was imagining drops collected on top of me, and I pictured our kids sleeping in currents of flowing water....but when I sat up to check (every 20 minutes or so), everyone and everything was very, very dry. Yup, our tent closely resembled a turtle (with its bright, green tarp pulled tightly around its cheap frame), but we were (relatively) warm and not at all sopping wet. It was great.




I love that camping leaves the kids with lots of safe space to play. I didn't have to keep yelling, "No, no, you need to stay by mama. No, you cannot take Max (the dog's) bone from him. No, you cannot walk into the road. No, you cannot "swim" in the creek."

I love the less-cleanup, less-supervision, less-having-to-pay-bills-and-balance-check-books escape of camping.

I'll tell you what I DIDN'T love about this particular camping trip. I didn't love the "delicacy" we consumed called hot chocolate:
The kids were way too busy to be bothered with drinking anything, so I decided I would be a "good" mom and let them have hot chocolate. At least the kids would be tricked into drinking the milk that I mixed in with it, and the cocoa would keep us nice and warm.
We contentedly drank our cocoa by the fire, sharing it between the four of us. There was just a little bit left in the bottom of the cup when S noticed a small, whitish thing lounging on the lid of the thermos. I smiled at her reassuringly and said, "Oh, S. It's ok. It is just a....(I hesitated a second while I studied the small, white, possible marshmallow to make sure I labeled it correctly....)

"It is just a....(gag, gag, swallow, gag)....a maggot!"

There was a maggot....a MAGGOT!.....on our cocoa lid. There were even more floating and crowded together in my cup when I opened it up to check. Yup....what I thought were marshmallows melting more slowly than usual were actually clusters of maggots doing syncrenized swimming in the cocoa I had just fed to myself and all three of our kids. I do not love that so much. At all. What I assumed was Swiss Miss with Marshmallows turned out to be Swiss Miss with Maggots. I still have a lump in my throat.

Yeah, I love camping, but I probably won't brave the hot cocoa again any time soon.