Assateague Island

It was a while ago when Craig and I realized that every single vacation we have ever taken has been with family.  This has been awesome-- it's meant visiting New York City and Hershey Park while staying with each of my sisters, it's meant going to Hawaii, Texas, and South Carolina with all of Craig's family, and it's meant Seattle, Sunriver, and Disney World with mine.  We have had wonderful fun vacations this way.  But still, it seemed like we ought to be grown up enough to do a vacation without relying on someone else to foot the bill or provide a place to stay.

So we vacationed in the next cheapest way possible: we went camping!

This was a big step for us.  We've been camping plenty of times, but almost always with friends from our ward here.  And never for more than one night.  And not since we added a fourth kid to our brood.  This time it was just the six of us and for TWO nights.  Which may not sound like a big deal, but it meant worrying about food on a whole new level.

We decided we wanted to see Assateague Island, near Ocean City, Maryland.  That would mean camping on the beach (and seeing the ocean always makes me happy) and the opportunity to see wild horses!  I was sold.  And Kendra-- who, like all little girls, loves horses-- was even more sold.  Away we went!

I think I've said this before, but the thing I love most about camping is that I get to let Craig do all the work. ALL of it.  And he does a great job.  You should have seen the lists he made before we even left of all the things we would need: everything from which cooking utensils to what food to finding an extra tent to borrow...  And then he had the fun task of cramming it all into our car (around the four children, who do a pretty good job of filling it all by themselves!).  I honestly didn't think there was any way it would all fit, but he made it work somehow:

There are four children hidden underneath all those pillows, tents, sleeping pads, and yes, baby swing.  Plus the cooler, box of non-perishable food items, sleeping bags, beach towels, cook stove, and general stuff like sunscreen, bug spray, tarp, clothes, etc, etc, etc.

We got there without any problems and got all set up.  This was a little tricky: it was super windy and Ryder kept wanting to throw sand on everything.  What made it ten times worse was the overly friendly people next to us who kept offering to help, and then proceeded to sit and watch us struggling against the wind and our naughty two-year-old.  I'm sure they meant well, but it mostly just made us feel self-conscious and stupid.  Ah, well-- it wasn't exactly tragic, just kind of annoying.  We got our two tents set up eventually:

Bentley in front of our two tents.  And just over that sand dune is the ocean!

The Scoresbys very graciously let us borrow their new pop-up shade

The next day was pretty much spent entirely at the beach.  It's always amazing to me to see how much fun kids can have on the beach, whether they're throwing sand into the ocean, building sand castles, digging for crabs or splashing in the waves.  The beach is never boring when you're little. 

Craig takes a panorama of the beach, featuring Kendra!

My job was to hold the baby while Craig played with the kids

Kendra showing off a tiny crab she found

Sleepy Colton

And here come the wild horses!

I was pretty proud of this shot, considering I was zooming with an iPhone on the beach and my hands were covered with sand and sunscreen...

Nap time

Nothing like a back-lit feral pony!

And napping again, this time inside the tent (and with all the kids)

And the next day we headed home!  It seems like a short amount of time, but we were sandy, wind-blown, and exhausted.  But not so exhausted that we didn't take the opportunity to stop by and see Ocean City's boardwalk.  It turned out to be a bit too sunny, loud and tacky, so we weren't huge fans.  But I'm still glad we got to see it!  And then we drove home, enjoying at least one hour of the drive when all of the kids fell asleep at the same time!

I have to admit-- I'm kind of proud of us that we could pull it all off. 

Look at what grown up people Craig and I are turning out to be!