Thanks only to the help of wonderful friends! We had a great time, but this experience has reinforced the idea that camping is done best with friends and I will never try it on my own. But despite leaving half my tent poles at home (please don’t ask me how), having my battery die 3 times at the campsite and a huge midnight thunderstorm, we had a great time.

We camped on the beach with 4 other homeschool families at Breezy Point, Maryland. Luckily it was plenty warm for swimming and the evenings were beautiful. There was a pier where some of the boys hung crab traps (and caught several crabs) and fished. The boys loved having their friends available as soon as they woke up in the morning. Not to mention cooking over the fire and marshmallows!

The first night we were there, there was a HUGE wind and thunderstorm. Luckily Kyle slept through the whole thing, as he is a little wary of storms, even if we are in the house. I was worried throughout that he would wake up and be scared, but we got lucky. Jason and I weathered it together (from about midnight until 2am)…he thought that it was kinda cool and kinda scary. I was just glad that the tent did not blow away (seeing as how we jury-rigged it) although I did have to go out and restake the fly twice because of the wind.  Great thing was that the inside of the tent stayed completely dry as did my car (which had died after dark with the window down).

I am a bit embarrassed to post this picture, but for the sake of keeping things real on this blog (and so that I can remember and laugh later), here is my poor tent that we juryrigged (please promise me not to laugh):

Fairly functional, despite the fact that you had to crawl on your hands and knees to get in and out. One of our friends only stayed one night, so they lent me their poles for the last night we were there. I can’t tell you how much of a kick I got out of seeing the tent the way it was supposed to be set up:

So we definitely learned a lot on this trip…don’t leave your car doors open too long, remember to triple check your tent poles, always keep the door to your tent zipped (or risk mosquitos at night), try to relax during thunderstorms, and always go camping with good friends.

Depsite everything that happened, we really did have a blast. We are looking forward to our next trip!

If you want to check out additional photos, check out my Breezy Point flickr set (which includes some pics taken by a friend of mine as well).