Camping fascinates the younger set especially because you get to burn stuff. The best are things that explode, smoke and shrivel, or turn the flames strange colors. Cardboard boxes with colorful dyes have many of these qualities. At home we have a gas fireplace and that definitely doesn't capture the whole smoke in your eyes, your nose, your mouth and lingering in your clothes that a campfire provides. The kids have actually even started eating marshmallows, but I suspect the main motivation is to claim we need to keep the fire going.
This is when it started to get cold and the kids also found an unexpected benefit to burning things -- it keeps you warm. Our tent and sleeping bags were intended for much warmer weather -- I expect they were intended for camping where the low was the freezing point for water, not the high. I had four cheap sleeping bags and zipped two pairs together to make two queen-sized bags. Then I put one inside the other with four blankets between. We wore two layers of pajamas with a hoodie on top to keep our heads warm. Then we all got in the multi-layered bag together. This worked very well. I knew it was cold because the complaints of being smushed were minimal. Actually, the totality of complaints on the trip were near nonexistent, I was very impressed.
This was also the day when I realized that my idea of cooking for my children was a well-meaning but entirely unrealistic goal. I had a fire extinguisher all ready, but I still had some fundamental challenges to overcome:
- I'm not fond of cooking (I think I've made a total of five complete meals in the last ten years).
- Monitoring a three year-old near two seperate open flames is nerve wracking.
- Preparing food generally means I don't have a burner available for making my coffee.
- Picky eaters.
- I'm an easily distracted person, which the cooking stove takes shameful advantage of.
- No washing sinks available this time in the season.
- I'm not fond of cooking.
So, our eating quickly changed to anything that could be made with one pot of hot water, the fresh and dried fruit we brought, animal crackers, marshmallows, bagels, cheerios and soy milk, pre-cooked bacon and hot dogs (the kids could cook these themselves with a stick), and soy butter and/or jelly sandwiches. Hm. Actually, this is exactly how I ate before I met my husband.
Tuesday, second full day. On a tip from a camping neighbor with similarly aged kids, I brought the kids on a tiny hike to Zapata falls. We walked on a semi-frozen creek, into a narrow rock crevice to see the frozen falls.
Camping fascinates the younger set especially because you get to burn stuff. The best are things that explode, smoke and shrivel, or turn the flames strange colors. Cardboard boxes with colorful dyes have many of these qualities. At home we have a gas fireplace and that definitely doesn't capture the whole smoke in your eyes, your nose, your mouth and lingering in your clothes that a campfire provides. The kids have actually even started eating marshmallows, but I suspect the main motivation is to claim we need to keep the fire going.
See the tiny figure in pink? That's Kai and Rowan's new friend Christine (7), she's the easiest to spot. Above her is Rowan and below her is Kai. The two kids above them are Ben (6) and Johnny (4), Christine's two little brothers. The adult figure above them is Christine's grandmother. I thought I was brave to bring my kids camping, but she and her husband brought six children (the three other kids are 14, 12 and 12) down from Centennial for Spring Break. 
I don't know who the folks are, but they were photogenic. This was our first full day and our warmest day.
Our first view of the Dunes. The day before they'd had six inches of snow and these lines of white were all that was left after a day of sunshine. We were all amazed and excited, it was my first trip to the dunes.
I'm not sure the name of this peak. It's just south of Walsenburg and this picture was taken standing on Highway 160, just after I retreived my hubcap. There are a number of things that I saw on the way that I want to take pictures of -- sometime I don't have three easily bored children with me.
I checked the weather before we left -- raining Saturday, the day I packed the camping gear, and then supposedly sunny days for our Spring Break week at the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. The kids and I were going to have a happy warm trip and come back five days later on Friday.
Li Mei's hair is getting long; she's had four haircuts since August. Those are new shoes too, size six. She was in a size three in China. She's also going so fast now that the mobility specialist that works with her has constant panic attacks that a face plant into the concrete is imminent.
Kai sleeps so soundly that he doesn't realize he's being used as a pillow and Jasmine is so rubbery she can sleep comfortably like that. Jasmine really likes to crash on Kai.
