Simple pleasures in Illinois

What a good weekend. We had our second camping trip of the year at Carlyle Lake in Illinois with my husband’s cousin, her husband and their three children.

When we realized that the drive was 5 1/2 hours – for some reason, we were thinking 4 1/2 – we were a little nervous. Driving that long with a 1-year-old? Are we crazy? And for just a three-day weekend. We started having some doubts. But the whole reason behind the long drive is that it was exactly half way between their family and ours, and we really wanted to meet up with them.

Steve’s cousin, Misty, is 32, almost exactly one year older than me. Her husband works as an IT manager, not quite what my husband the Web developer does, but to me they’re still in the same techno computer geek category. So, we have a lot in common with them. Also, we learned that just like Steve, Nick has no idea where anything is in their camper. But they are both very handy at getting them set up. Misty and I do the put away and bed making. We’re not exactly breaking any gender stereotypes, but it works.

The drive wasn’t too bad. Ella was kinda on and off. She slept, but also went through some high maintenance periods, and she also just played with her toys a lot. She’s a LOUD girl though. Even when she’s just looking at a toy she’s babbling very LOUDLY. I blame my husband. He’s just a loud guy. When he’s on the phone at home I can hear him from about anywhere in the house. Also when he watches TV it’s BLARING LOUD. Perhaps he has hearing problems. Sometimes I wish I had hearing problems with those two.

We finally arrived and it was beauuutiful. We could see the huge lake, “the largest in Illinois” from everywhere. And our camper buddies had reserved two awesome sites for us in the middle of the peninsula we were on – next to bathrooms, but not anywhere close to water for safety, so just right.

We took turns cooking the meals and they often would watch Ella for us, then we’d watch their kids – who were so sweet and well behaved, and loved “baby Ella” as they referred to her. They happily played with play-doh at a picnic table for quite a while once, and a few other times they all got in one of our cars and played “road trip.” Very cute. Other times we took walks to see the lake or the boats at the marina and a playground. We also took a trip to a nearby beach one day. Just a lot of good outdoor time and a lot of good food.

And Ella was very good and I think she had a lot of fun. At one point I put her in our camper in the pack n play for a nap and suddenly I heard a “Hey mom.” Her first sentence! And I looked up and she was lifting the shade and smashing her face against the camper wall and just grinning. It was hilarious.

I learned a lot of tips from the other family too about making camping life easier. Like I need something to put a trash bag in – they had a collapsible cooler. You can never find a place to put the garbage bags. And I need drawers for my kitchen supplies! In pop-ups there is no storage above the middle of the camper because of course, it all gets collapsed down … So anyway, I have a new list of things I want to get for our next trip. It’s kinda addictive.

Oh, and I took my new shark vacuum in the car, because before we left I was sweeping out old raisins and goldfish and things out of my car and decided to just leave it in the car. It was awesome. We had a clean car for the ride home. Simple pleasures right?

Photos to come later …