Proud Moments

We all have them – stuff we did that we’re proud of.  This week on Kingdom Bloggers were showing off a little prowess in areas you might not have guessed about us. Stay tuned all week and add your own proud feats in the comments.

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I’ve never enjoyed camping, not as a child and not as an adult. I don’t like being dirty, absolutely detest public bathrooms and I’m getting too old to sleep on the ground. But I’m a good mom, or at least I try insanely hard to create fantastic memories for my Boy that will balance out the trauma I caused him in other areas. One such memory making opportunities is camping. He’s a boy, he loves dirt, he loves sleeping in a pack (everyone on the ground together) and it’s only in his later childhood years that he’s developed a quasi-phobia about public toilets. Probably because I’d scoot him away back to home rather abruptly if he even so hinted at a #2, but that’s another story.

When my Boy was three, I thought it would be a good idea to take him camping. When he was two, we tested it out by sleeping in a tent in the backyard – I could handle that. The next summer comes along and I decide, Yes. I can do this. Let me clarify, I am speaking in singular first person because my Man is not available to us in the summer for overnight excursions. When I say I took my Boy camping, I mean me and only me.

I made all the necessary purchases – a 5-man tent (because the dinky 3-man tent was not enough room for me, my Son and our stuff), a coleman stove, and of course, an above-ground blow-up bed. I packed up the car, my Man loaded us up with firewood and off we went to the great unknown.

Thirty minutes later, I arrived at a beautiful campground on the ocean. I proceeded to unpack the car and begin to set up camp. Did I mention my Boy was three? He was no help whatsoever and in fact, I had to stop what I was doing every few minutes to make sure he was still on-site. Finally the car is unloaded and I decide where to place the tent. That’s when I look at the directions – it shows 2-3 people in the helpful diagram. I am one person, and a 3-year old. I have been called tenacious (some might say stubborn), and eventually the tent is in place.

By now it’s nearly dinner time and I’m determined to make dinner on the fire. The only problem is I’ve never started a fire in my life. Oh well, it can’t be too hard, and an hour later, it wasn’t. We had our fire-cooked dinner and s’mores too and drifted off to a sleepless night. (Seriously, the crunch, crunch of people walking along the path near our site to make a midnight trip to the bathroom is extremely loud in a tent.)

We stayed two nights – because it’s way too much work for one night and remember when I said at the beginning I absolutely detest public toilets? Yeah, well 2 days is about all I can take. After that, the cramps are too much to handle.

I’ve done other things I’m proud of but nothing has been as satisfying as feeling like I might actually be able to survive if I had to.