Like A Fish

In June we enrolled Xandra in her first swimming lessons.  They were the kind of lessons where I got to get in the water with her and her instructor.

She loved the lessons and she loved her teacher, Miss Melanie. 

She also loved the shower.

I was thoroughly impressed with her willingness to try new skills.  By the end of the class she was floating on her back for 25 seconds, happily submerging her whole self in the water, picking up rocks from the bottom of the pool, jumping in the pool, and floating on her tummy, face in water.

While we were at lessons, Ms. Carol held down the fort at home.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Eventually, it happens to all of them...

a little warm milk, a long morning,

and they're snoring in their high chair.

Flapjacks

We awoke our final morning at the campsite to rain.  Joe and I decided that our best course of action was to pack up camp and head to a nearby shelter to make a pancake breakfast before we hit the road.

The pooper scoopers hadn't been out yet on this morning, as you can see horse poop in the foreground of this picture.

 It was raining and a bit chilly, but we enjoyed our pancake breakfast, wrapped in towels for warmth, just the same.

Aliyah found a plastic knife and spent more time cutting her pancakes than eating them.

This big eater devoured three pancakes all on his own.

On the last morning of camping, with the rain coming down and the wind blowing, and too much pancake batter left in the bottom of the bowl, laziness took over

to create the biggest pancake I've ever made in my life.

It's no small task getting that beauty cooked evenly over the small campstove burner.  At least I thought it wasn't until I returned from a bathroom trip with the girls a few minutes later to find Joe had made a more beautiful and perfect XXL pancake in my absence.  There's no real proof of his superior pancake, however, since no one bothered to snap a picture of him one upping me. 

After breakfast, we reloaded the car and headed for home.  Home, the place where all the sand is now.  We might have sand, but so far the wind hasn't blown our house in on us.  It's good to be home.

In Tents

No trip with the Pulls is complete without a few mishaps.  Our first misguided adventure began on Saturday afternoon.  After spending some time at the beach on Saturday morning and enjoying lunch together, we decided it would be good for the family to have some rest time.  The temperature inside the tent at the campsite felt like it was about 140 degrees.  After some thinking and deliberation and misguided use from our not so trusty GPS, we found that there was a Wal-Mart a mere seven miles from our campsite.  We decided that the kids would be happier and cooler resting in the car, so we headed to Wal-Mart to purchase a shade tent (think tent with no sides) that we could take up to the nice, cool beach and get some relief from the sun, while resting underneath. 

As is normal with us, we made a few wrong turns here and there and eventually arrived at our destination:  Wally's Auto Repair.  I checked again.  No sign of Wal-Mart...just a big open field with an establishment plopped down in the middle:  Wally's Auto Repair.  We meandered around a few minutes knowing for sure that the Wal-Mart must be nearby and that there's no way the GPS would confuse Wally's Auto Repair with Wal-Mart, right?  We never found the Wal-Mart and we never stopped to inquire if there was one nearby.  At this point, we should have returned to camp, but instead we headed to another Wal-Mart, about 20 minutes away.  When we arrived at this Wal-Mart with a SAMS Club next door 45 minutes later, we were able to find our shade tent and a few other supplies we'd forgotten at home.  A trip that we'd hope would take an hour took more like 2 1/2 hours to complete.  We didn't mind, however, the kids got some rest and we enjoyed good conversation and quiet time.   We tried not to notice the large-sized billboard advertising a Wal-Mart about 10 minutes from the State Park. 

When we got back to camp we took our newly purchased shade tent and other beach gear up to the beach to relax for the rest of the afternoon.  Shortly after erecting the shade tent, which was no small or easy task, and having the wind blow it down the beach, we took the shade tent back down. 

We enjoyed the beach awhile longer and took ourselves, our unused shade tent and our beach toys back to camp.   As I was preparing dinner, Joe set the shade tent up at the campsite so we'd have somewhere nice and shaded to sit the following day.

 Later in the evening, just as we were completing our marshmallow roasting, (everyone but Trisha had devoured two marshmallows) a storm quickly rolled into the campsite. The wind that came with the storm was so strong that it blew our recently erected shade tent right out of the campsite. As I ran after the shade tent, it began pouring rain. Joe threw the kids inside the tent and then came to help me wrestle the shade tent into submission. Just as it seemed we might be gaining some ground on the tent, we heard screaming from our other tent where all of the kids were housed. When I looked over at the tent I saw that the wind had blown the tent over on top of all four kids.  They were lost inside the tent, panicking. I left Joe on his own with the unruly shade tent and crawled inside the dilapitated tent and found the girls, their bears and their blankies and carried them, one by one, to the van in the pouring rain.  

When I had rescued the girls, I went in for Joey, who was sleeping in the pack n play when disaster struck. When I found him he was still happily sleeping in the pack n play, oblivious to and undisturbed by the world caving in around him. In fact, he didn't even wake up until I was placing him in his carseat inside the safety of the van.

After getting all four kids in the van I returned to the tent to try and minimize the amount of water getting inside the tent. Unfortunately, all of the windows on the tent were unzipped when the storm began. We didn't stop to think about zipping them because we were so preoccupied with retrieving and taking down the shade tent. Since this tent had fallen in on itself, the water was now getting on beds, pillows, blankets and the laundry basket full of clean clothes. Once I found my way out of the tent and Joe had gotten our shade tent disassembled, we realized the storm was over.  We were left with the delimma:  Do we abandon camp for a hotel for the night or do we put the tent back up and hope no more wind storms come through in the night?  We settled for checking in at the Ranger Station.  They advised us that while it would rain again in the night, there would be no more strong winds.  It was after 9:30PM at this point and going to a hotel at the mercy of our only somewhat reliable GPS, meant not much sleep for anyone as we only had one car and Joe had to be at a triathlon meeting at 6:45 the next morning.  We opted for reerecting the tent and hoping for no more gale force winds.  By 10:30PM everyone was tucked into slightly wet beds and resting.  The only other glitch was that Theia awoke multiple times in the night crying because a light breeze was ruffling the tent and she was convinced the tent was going to fall on her again.  Eventually, she slept in bed with us and there were no more scared outbursts. 

Our tent never really recovered from it's collapse.  It remained a little saggy in the middle where it's once been taut.  I can relate.

The only other real problem from the night's events was that I never got my second marshmallow.

Oh, and the shade tent...

it finally got some use

in our own backyard.

At Play

The campground at Assateague had a great playground, which we had the pleasure of enjoying on Sunday evening.  There were swings,

(they sound like they're crying in this video, but they're really just having a good time)

and tunnels

and steps,

and twisting slides,

good for riding down

and for climbing up.

When they were all tired out

we headed back to camp for Smores and bedtime. 

If You Axe Him

...this was the best part of our weekend camping trip.

I have no idea why he thought that was funny, but as long as Joe swung the ax, baby Joe giggled...

and so did the rest of us.

Wild Life

As was mentioned in an earlier post, Assateague has feral horses that roam the island.  There were plenty of signs up warning campers against feeding the horses or getting too close to the horses.  So, like most campers, we took a few pictures of the horses, enjoyed seeing them when they were near the campsite or at the beach, but kept our distance and made sure the kids did too.

On Saturday evening after a long day lounging on the beach building sand castles, we returned to camp to prepare dinner.  As I was pulling baskets, food and cooking supplies from the van one of the horses meandered into our campsite.  Being a little scared of the horses' wild nature, we kept our distance and let the horse roam around.  As the horse approached the picnic table where the girls were sitting and I was preparing dinner, I started to get a bit nervous.  Then the horse stuck it's nose directly into the laundry basket where I had much of our food stored.  At this point I started to panic and called for Joe to come help.  Joe sent me for a towel to use to cover the food and shoo the horse away.  By the time I got back to the basket, the horse was happily munching away on a bag of apples contained in the laundry basket.  Armed with the towel, we shooed him away and put the towel over our food.  In the 10-15 seconds that he had his snout in our basket, he ate three of our apples.  The girls were in disbelief and I was indignant over the theft of our perfectly good apples.  I was so busy being indignant I neglected to snap any pictures of the horse or the mangled apples.  The girls still love to talk about this part of our camping adventure.  In fact, if you ask them about camping, usually the first thing they mention is that fact that the horse at our apples.  Aliyah says it best, "Horsey eat apples.  Naw-eee ho-see!"

The horses weren't the only wildlife at Assateague interested in our food.  Our first morning at camp, we had to move to another campsite.  Joe and Xandra loaded most of our things in the van, drove them to the new site, unloaded them and came back for the remainder of our things.  While the laundry basket of food was sitting at the new campsite, some birds discovered a portion of foil-wrapped bread that had been left exposed.  We discovered their greedy nibbles when I pulled the basket from the van at noon to make sandwiches.

It's no wonder they saw the bread and took advantage.  Later that day when we left the campsite, we saw this:

It's as if they circle all day long just waiting for the moment when people leave their campsite.

The girls ran back to the campsite and attempted to chase the circling birds away. 

Their efforts were rewarded as the birds flew away.

I feel confident the birds returned for a grand feast when we left.  Usually at the end of meal times there is as much food under and on the table as there is inside any one of my children.

I've learned my lesson, next time we camp I'll be thoughtful enough to bring enough food all who dine at the Pull table:  people and wildlife.

Assateague Assault

Our primary reason for visiting Assateague the weekend of Father's Day was so Joe could participate in an early morning triathlon held at the park. The triathlon has a mandatory 6:45AM meeting for all participants. Staying at the campground meant Joe could get up early, attend the meeting and get all his triathlon gear set without having to drag his entire family out in the wee hours of the morning. It was a good plan.  Despite some unexpected bumps in the road the evening before causing a later than normal bedtime, Joe did wake early, attend the meeting and start the triathlon on time. 

The triathlon began on the beach not far from our campsite with a 1/2 mile swim in the ocean.   A later than anticipated start to the triathlon meant that the kids and I got to see Joe off for the swim portion of the morning.   Four things come to mind about this portion of the race:  1.  It looked intimidating.  Watching those big waves come crashing onto the shore would have been enough to convince me to quietly slink off the beach.  2.  I'm glad he was wearing a wetsuit.  Have I mentioned it looked intimidating?  3.  Pulling a stroller on the beach is hard work.  I wouldn't advise it.  4.  I forgot the camera.  It was 7:15AM.  I can't be expected to remember to capture these events on film, can I? 

After watching him run into the ocean and not knowing if we'd ever see him again, I decided we should head back to camp and get the van and drive to the transition area, just to make sure he survived.  After a quick survey of the parking areas, one of which was closed and one of which was full, I unabashedly played the "I have four small children aged 4, 3, 2, and 9 months and there's nowhere to park and they can't walk the mile from our campsite  card" to some higher-up with the race.  He very kindly pulled his sleek, sporty, cool-guy truck out of its spot and allowed me to park my nerdy, dirty, soccer mom minivan in his parking spot.  Next to seeing Joe come around the corning with his bike, it was definitely the highlight of the morning.

Truth be told I almost missed Joe come around the corner with his bike because I was staring at someone else who was running and carrying their bike.  I was contemplating if I should shout out to him that the bike had wheels and that he could roll it along the ground instead of carrying it and that it might make for an easier time, when Joe whizzed by us and waved.  He transitioned to the run 

and a half hour later, we were doing this

and this.

The final stats for the morning are as follows:

1/2 mile swim:  21:25

14 mile bike ride:  45:09

3.1 mile run:  24:13

Total time:  1:34:47

Well done, Joe!

Bringin' It Home

While visiting Assateague we took full advantage of being less than 50 yards from the ocean.  Several times a day we simply walked around the corner and found ourselves on a beautiful sandy, ocean beach.  While the girls weren't too excited about the actual ocean, they did love playing in the sand.

They also loved eating at the beach,

when they could talk their daddy into sharing the chips with them.

 Although we never managed to get a picture of him sandy-mouthed, we found that Baby Joe preferred to skip the chips and just eat the sand.

Since there was sand at the campsite, too, they were still creating masterpieces, with help from daddy, even when we weren't at the beach.

They were also burying daddy (with help from daddy) in the sand.

To put it simply, they loved the sand.

Our love for the beach was so great that we brought it home with us.  Four weeks after our beach stay I continue to find it all around my house, in the van, in carseats, on shoes, on the air mattress, and recently, in one of my pants pockets.   

All Around The Campsite

Over Father's Day weekend in June, we set off for a Pull family adventure, camping style, at Assateague (aka Appateage, Anasteage, Blapabede, and Smasaneage via our two, three and four year olds) Island State Park.  We got in late Friday night, set up camp in the dark

and were fully awake and about our usual business by 5:30AM on Saturday,

plus a few wild ponies and other campers.

These feral horses live on Assateague Island and share their home with campers like us.

I have to admit that I was in total disbelief when the girls woke us up with cries of seeing horses out the tent window.  Finally to appease them, I dragged myself to their side of the tent, only to discover they weren't imagining things, there really were ponies outside our tent.

We spent our first morning at the campsite packing up and moving to another campsite.  The kids enjoyed playing in the sand while we got settled. 

Dinner around the campsite was much like dinner at home:  messy.

Camping is hard work and wore the kids out.  On our second morning at the campsite, Aliyah climbed in our van, buckled herself in Xandra's carseat and promptly fell asleep.

The kids, who normally are not big fans of being dirty, were happy to be dirty.

  

At least until they realized they were dirty, then they pestered me incessantly to change their clothes.  The kids were generally good helpers around the campsite, too.  They enjoyed helping take down the tent

and pack everything up to go home.

I'm not sure what that says about their opinion of camping, but I'm always happy to have a helpful set of hands.