RodenBaby: First camping trip

Gee whiz, it's been an awfully long time since my last post. Sowwy! (As Teddy would say.) In an attempt to catch you up quickly, we are currently on Block Island having our first summer vacation since 2010 and it is heavenly. We also just bought a house! We won't close until mid-August but our offer has been accepted and deposit has been made. (Gulp.) It's a just-big-enough colonial, built in 1900, with a huge lot and big ole grassy yard and patio. It's one block from Opal, and one block from Vivien (see below for photos of these characters, fellow Chestnuts.)

Here is a link to see the listing, but I warn you, it's not that cute at the moment! I call it "home sweet homely." It was a great location and lot at a nice price, and all the other houses we had seen were way more, in locations we didn't love, and they all still needed a ton of work. This way, when we're done with it, we'll be exactly where we want to be and may even be a few thousand dollars ahead of the game. Plus, it will be fun to look at the before and after photos some day. (Luckily, Scott is handy, and is already hooked in to the contractor scene from his contacts at the mill where he has his shop.) There is a nice finished basement which will be immediately set up as a guest bedroom (complete with its own full bath), so come see us, won't you?

And now, to get back to the title of this post. We took the kids on their first camping trip over Memorial Day weekend. We went with three other families to Burlingame State Park, which some Rodees may remember as the scene of many of Cora and Carl's summer camping adventures. It's a huuuuuuuge campground, which didn't thrill us due to the lack of privacy and general hub-bub (our neighbors turned on their generator at 8 pm). But it's right by the beach so we got a two-for-one combo -- camping at night, beach by day.

The kids truly loved it. I asked Lil what her favorite and least favorite parts were: "s'mores" (favorite) and "when we had to go home" (least favorite). The collective we (all four families) are planning another camping trip to a more remote spot -- for two whole nights! -- in early August. The only real wrench in the works was Teddy, who was so excited to be freed from his crib he kept his sister up until almost 10 running around the tent and making funny faces. I walked back to the tent to listen in about 45 minutes after I left them and heard him saying, "Lil! Look at my mouth! Look at my mouth!' And then he woke up at 5:15. Next time, we've got to run him more so he collapses.