Thursday, July 2, 2009

Chloes' first camping trip


We left last Wednesday to go camping in Nebraska with all the women on my mom's side of the family, it was a 7 hour drive to my aunts house and Chloe did OK...she wasn't super excited about being in her car seat that long:( We left my aunts house Thursday morning and drove 3 more hours before we got to the lake:) We should have taken it as a sign when we couldn't find a spot at the lake we normally camp at but we didn't! My mom, sister, Chloe and I didn't drive 10 hours for nothing!! So we decided to drive another hour up the road(Chloe took a nap thank goodness!). We got in a little late so we stayed in these little cabins by a pond because that was all that was available and my grandma, mom and aunts all got up early in the morning to go look for a spot at this lake! Again we should have taken this as a sign because it took 3 hours for them to find somewhere for us to pitch our tents!!!

WE FINALLY HAVE A SPOT!!! YAY!

Everybody helps get everything unloaded and tents put up, it was so so hot all we wanted to do was go get in the water but we knew that we had to get camp set up first. Finally camp was set up except for the fire but we had already dug the whole so we were ahead of everything, TIME TO GO TO THE WATER!!! We all got in the lake and cooled off, Chloe had a great time...she fell asleep on one of the floats while I was carrying her around in the water :) My mom and aunts decide that they are going to head up to the campsite to get the fire started so that we can have dinner and put Chloe in her playpen so she could sleep, while they are doing that I notice a big storm cloud coming in and decide that we should all probably get outta the water since lightening is starting to strike! We pile into the car and find the weather station on the radio and they are calling for a super cell tornado!!! (All I want to do is grab Chloe and hold onto her and get somewhere save!)

All 9 of us start grabbing some blankets and a couple of food buckets and pile into the cars and drive up to the bathroom area...they have shower stalls that are just made out of a big brick building all the way around!...My gram stays in the truck because it's just raining at this point and it's the only way we can listen to the radio and know what is going on. All the sudden Gram gets outta the truck and says that the storm is headed right for us:( We are all standing in the little hallway between the bathrooms b/c the shower stall was really small and we knew we weren't in any real danger just yet. Suddenly the winds kicked up like crazy and HUGE goofball sized hail starts falling, we all get into the shower stall because the hail was blowing into the hallway we were stand in:( The storm passes over us without a tornado developing thank goodness and we all head back to camp to pack up because the national weather center is calling for high wind storms all night long.

We get back to camp to see our tents completely ruined:( the poles were shattered and poking out of random places in the tent:( I think it took us less time to pack everything up than it did to get it all unpacked:) We got out of town before the next storm hit, and went to my grandmas for the next 3 days...wish we could have stayed at the lake but it was still nice to spend time with my gram and poppy!

Our poor tent...you can't see how bad the poles are in the picture
The little cabin we stayed in
My pretty baby:)