The Arrington Zoo

Last Thursday our family had a little adventure. My side of the family decided that for our family reunnion this year we would go to Lehman Caves in Nevada and camp for three days. James and I were dreading it a bit because the last couple of times that we have tried to camp with the kids it's been a nightmare. We were optomistic however hoping that it would be better since they are a bit older than the last time. It was a little over a four hour drive and Mills started throwing up when we were about an hour away. She remained a bit sick the rest of the time but took it well. It really was pretty good except at night. Bedtime was nuts and I seriously wondered what we were doing there. The first night in poured all night long. We were in a summer tent and therefore got a few drips. But all in all I am surprised we stayed as dry as we did. It was pure providence. We had decided to let the kids sleep in the van that night. The idea was to crack the windows and pitch our tent right next to the van so we could hear them just fine and they would have good ventalation. Problem was, due to the rain we couldn't crack the windows. We cracked one and draped plasic over it to keep the rain out which sort of defeated the purpose of ventalation. So all night James and I slept uneasy worrying that the kids would be short on air. We got up a couple of times just to open a door and let fresh air into their steamy abode. The next night they slept in the tent with us and we were spared the rain, though there was a lot of really loud wind. And Mills woke up to a false throw up alarm. All in all, we had Andrew pee his pants twice, something he had been doing really well on until the camp out, Liza pooped her pants a couple of times, something she'd been doing extremely good on until the camp out, Mills being sick, along with two other cousins, and James getting diarrhea, a raccoon or skunk padding around our tent door due to me totally forgetting to put Lily's dog food in the car, Eliza falling directly into the fire. She was walking backwards and fell right in bum first. Monte and I grabbed her and pulled her out and amazingly she was o.k., all except for a blister burn on her hand where she grabbed the metal edge of the fire pit. Christian sliced his finger nearly to the bone with his pocket knife while carving. He passed out a bit and that was quite exciting. My mom had to drive to Baker (about 20 min.) and buy some super glue to patch it up. Due to it being a cut that really should have had stitches, they couldn't just bandage it. Hooray for super glue. It was quite an adventure. Next year will be better. On the upside, we saw lots of deer, went on a fun hike, the stars were amazing, the mountains were beautiful, and Lehman Caves was just as cool as I remembered it. Ta ta.