Beach Baby

On Friday we packed up the car and headed to the beach for a big family camping trip. We switched Lily to her big girl carseat for the trip. Overall I think she likes the seat, but it was harder for her to fall asleep in it as it's more upright than her infant seat. Riding in the car always involves a lot of screaming, so I guess this trip wasn't much different than a trip to the grocery store, it just involved longer bouts of the screaming.
We were actually the first group to arrive at the campsite, and it was already getting dark, so we hurried to get our tent set up. I tried to help while wearing Lily on my back in the Beco, but the mosquitos were really bad as we hadn't set up a fire or anything yet so I hung out in the car with her while Benjamin worked on the tent. I only had to tell him 3 times to read the directions. :)
Once the tent was pitched I got to work setting up our giant airmattress. Lily LOVED the tent. And the airmattress. And camping in general, really. She really loves being outside. She spent at least an hour Friday night just rolling happily around the tent.
Friday night we were joined by Lindy, then my mom, Ian, and Zoe. Ian slept in a hammock in the trees, while Lindy shared a tent with Mom and Zoe. Saturday morning we were up bright and early. Ian got right to work starting a fire, and found this crazy lizard while looking for firewood:
Saturday afternoon Anna and Josh joined us. Poor Anna was sick the whole time. :(
I picked up this awesome little wagon at Target for the Lilster. Everyone gave me a hard time for buying her a wagon when she's so small, and for packing it in our tiny car when we barely had room for ourselves and a tent, but she loves it!
The Pinkertons and Lathrops also joined us on Saturday. The Lathrops had just spent a week at Outer Banks, and this was an extension of that trip, so they were pretty worn out. It didn't help that it rained all of Saturday evening and we had heavy rain and thunderstorms all through Saturday night. Saturday evening we ate dinner huddled under a tarp around Ian's hammock. We were all cold and wet by Sunday morning.
The reason for the trip was to celebrate Ian's graduation
and Lindy turned 30 on Sunday.
Sunday afternoon we headed to the beach where most of the family spent some time digging a giant hole. Benjamin loved this part, so there were lots of pictures taken of the event:


The hole ended up being about 6 feet deep, I think. Here is Zoe drowning in it:
Passersby were impressed. Mom and I watched and fussed like nervous hens.
Eventually the sun came out for a bit. At one point all of the guys (Benjamin, Ian, Josh, Lark) were riding the waves on this raft. I wish I had gotten pictures of that. :)
At the end of the day we were all exhausted and sunburnt (except Lily who had napped in the shade), so we showered and headed back to the campground.
Benjamin took this picture and said "why didn't anyone tell me I look this haggard?!" :)
The campground had a weird, sad, petting zoo. Benjamin took this photo as well:
Most people packed up and left on Sunday (the Lathrops left pretty much first thing in the morning as Lisa was stressed from their long trip and all of the rain, Lindy had to get home so her new boyfriend could take her out on a birthday date, and Anna and Josh took Zoe home so she could write an essay and go to school on Monday). So Sunday night it was just us, Mom, Ian, and the Pinkertons. Lark made tuna kabobs on the fire that were delicious. The temperature dropped pretty low on Sunday evening so I went to bed early to stay with Lily and keep her warm. Ian, Lark, and Benjamin hung out by the fire for hours talking about black holes, parenting, and Ian's possible trip to Germany to work on an organic farm. Mom and Ian left before we woke on Monday. We had some oatmeal and coffee with Dayna and the girls and then packed up our stuff. Zinnia got to pull Lily around in the wagon for a bit:
And then we came home. But here is one more of Benjamin's pictures, because he really loves Zoe :)