Camp Trip Summer 2012

We're on the road home a few days early.  Ran out of food, cash, and the will to be parents.  I love Bar Harbor; it’s gorgeous and there’s so much to do.  I knew planning for 2 weeks was ambitious but I was willing to take the chance.  My main goal was to have my husband spend time with the kids.  And the only rule was we couldn’t leave until everyone was happy.  When I announced it, all 3 of them said “I’m happy.”  Well bah humbug to you too.

The first few days we had my 25 year old step-daughter with us.   As she had only 3 days to play she had a lot on her agenda.  She exhausted us.  While it was good to have the extra person, we were crabby from the get-go.  We biked, beached, and went out for lunch on a rainy day.  Once she left we slowed the pace down and eased into the transition of the day.

Have I mentioned the boys?  Now, I know that there are some parents who do the whole vacation thing beautifully by incorporating the needs of their children into the overall plan.  They play with them, bring all the necessary accessories, and have assigned chores so the kids feels like they’re involved.  But my husband and I don’t work that way.  It’s enough to tend to ourselves.  I try to maintain some sort of structure, but now matter what, there’s always a lot of yelling.  The boys don’t play well together and the younger one is beyond Dennis the Menace, in a manic sort of way.  Even after almost 2 weeks together 24/7 I still can’t figure him out.  (We’re working on it.)  If I were our neighbors at the campground, I’d probably move.  We’re all very loud.

The low point was our last night when we thought we’d go for an early dinner.  When we got to the restaurant, we decided we’d rather go across the street for the better view.  But young “Dennis” didn’t like that and wanted to stay.  Which he made known by screaming at the top of his lungs and kicking everything in the car.  My husband got out to restrain him which only made him louder.  A waitress from the restaurant came out to the parking lot to see what was going on and gave us the look of death.  I thought she was going to call social services.  Once we got “Dennis” quieted down, but not quite calm as we discovered later, we drove back to the campsite and regrouped.  We decided against going out and ate all the leftover food for dinner.  We were all quite shaken and discouraged.

Other highlights include my oldest son getting chased by a seagull at the beach as he was eating string cheese.  He just wouldn’t let go and the bird wasn’t going to give up so it ended up in a chase.  While it was actually kind of scary we were all laughing.  He ran in circles on the beach holding on to the cheese with the bird swooping in and getting frighteningly close but finally giving up.  Of course the cheese was no good after the chase, and my son will probably never eat string cheese again, but it makes for a good story.

Our biggest accomplishment was when “Dennis” insisted on losing the training wheels and learned how to ride a bike.  He refused to ride it with the training wheels on and went all around the campground on his scooter the first week.  In true “Dennis” form he came racing around the corner to the campsite, fell off his scooter and screamed to holy heaven, terrifying the neighbors and alerting everyone to his brother on his Ripstick.  There’s a “No Skateboarding” rule in effect at the campground and that unfortunately inlcudes Ripsticks. So his big brother lost out on his favorite activity early in the week.  What’s with the bad rap on skateboards?

We biked the carriage paths twice and we went for a short hike, as well as went to Sand Beach and swam in the pool and biked all over the campground everyday.  I had planned on much more but the energy to coordinate all 3 males was too much.  The boys talked about going into town everyday so they could go to the toy store and then begged for quarters so they could buy 20oz sodas.  And the oldest figured out that there was a TV room and hid there for the last part of the week.  In turn, we gave up on “Dennis” and let him play with the iPad when he wanted.

“Dennis” announced he was happy and asked when we could go home.  Between the TV viewing on a regular basis, the tantrums of “Dennis”, and my husband shutting down the stress was too much for me.  I don’t think the 12 days was a failure by any means though.  I trust in my heart of hearts that while the boys only talk about soda and TV now, they’ll remember the important stuff like the beach, hike, lakes, and rides later.  And of course time spent with family without dwelling on the yelling and general chaos.