Our First Time Camping & the Tow Truck Tragedy

My good friend Brittney somehow convinced us to try camping with her family (Bryony's BFF Madelynn). I told her that my memories of camping as a Girl Scout in England were rain, mud, cold, tying knots and cleaning. That it just wasn't for us. Plus we have a 2 year old who does HORRIBLY at night in hotels, grandma's house, anywhere that isn't her own room. But she promised me that we'd have fun. She said that camping in AZ is never really cold, and that she'd be doing cocktails as opposed to cleaning. So, we bought the basics (a tent) and thought we'd give it a try.

Here we are ready to go to Fool Hollow Lake that morning:

Aaand here we are 2 hours later, halfway between home and the lake, stranded on the side of the road because our car died! Such a bummer for our first try! We had to call a tow truck and wait for it to drive out to meet us (because of course we were between towns).

We quickly named it the Tow Truck Tragedy

Jake had to go all the way back to Phoenix with the tow truck, then get back in our other car and start the drive up again. The girls and I waited for hours in a McDonald's for the Peck family to go on to the lake, get themselves set up, and then have Brittney turn around and come back to get us. If it weren't for her 'camp or bust' attitude, the whole weekend would've been over!

Finally, at 7pm ,we sat down to our first camping meal (we should've arrived around 3pm). Jake joined us at 9pm and we joked that maybe the Madonnas weren't cut out for camping after all.

But the rest of the weekend went swimmingly. Darcy handled everything just fine, even sleeping well in a tent. And Abigail and Bryony had an amazing time with friends in the sun. The whole thing was so much prettier than I expected.

In more ways than one, ha ha!

Thank you Brittney!

Girl Scout Cookie Selling Prizes

they earned these!

Bryony

Bryony loves to take the Ipad and walk around filming herself, like a YouTuber. This is the only one I can share because the others are reallllly long.

And, she finally lost another tooth:

             

Quick Weekend in Ojai

Quick weekend with the family to celebrate Morgan's 11th birthday :)

These pictures remind me of this one!

Abigail 2010

                

We are so used to the 7hr drive, we have it down! But with a 2 year old it doesn't always go to plan, ha ha

Owen

To make a little extra money, and help a good girlfriend out, AND to give Darcy a playmate, I watch my friend Megan's son, Owen, three times a week. I also watched his older brother, Liam, two years ago. It is a great fit for both Megan and I! Here are Owen and Darcy having fun at the Children's Museum, and the train park:

Darcy, nervous of the merry-go-round

took a minute ...

but she got there :)

believe it or not, there are actually only 10 months between these 2