Weekly recap + What we ate: Fall Camping

The kids had two days off school this week. Monday was end of quarter grading, and Tuesday was election day. Schools close here on election day because a lot of schools are used as polling locations. So I did get my act together and took the two younger kids on a camping overnight. The oldest had been invited to a birthday party, so she did that.

We went to Burke Lake, about an hour away in Virginia. The main reason I chose this campground was that it was close and also one could book a single night stay. Most of our usual campgrounds require a two night stay. I hadn’t been to Burke Lake before, and found it is a pretty suburban campsite; I could hear the traffic from where we were. As expected, the place was pretty quiet. I imagine it’s a very popular destination in the summer – there is a lake for boating, with a nice trail around the perimeter, and there is also a carousel and ice cream stand and a train ride, none of which was open. I was a little nervous at how empty it was at first. We were the only ones at the campground when we arrived at 1pm, and I do sometimes wonder if camping by myself as a woman is the most prudent thing. But another group arrived late in the afternoon so I felt better.

It was a pretty relaxed camping trip, as these things go. I had thought that we could hike the trail around the lake, but once I had set the tent and the hammock up, the kids were happy just to swing in the hammock and play with their toy cars. We did go for a little woodsy stroll along the part of the lake trail that came past our campground. The weather was lovely – almost 80 degrees – and the afternoon sun was golden. The trees were almost all bare, leaving such a thick carpet of leaves for us to swish through.

This time of year, it gets dark so early, so I started dinner at 4pm. I also made a fire – that’s one of the kids’ favorite parts of camping. I made mac n cheese and we roasted hot dogs over the fire to put in our mac n cheese. We had ‘smores.

The sunset around 5:15pm, and it was dark. I remember looking at my watch as the sun was going down and thinking, “What am I going to do – there’ still three hours til bedtime.” Well, turns out, with my kids, once the sun went down, they were ready to turn in. I’m not sure if it was the lack of sunlight, the big day, or the end of daylights savings, but they were pretty tuckered out by 6:30pm. Maybe it was all three factors. We went to the bathhouse to brush our teeth, returned to the tent to put on our pjs, and I read them two chapters from Winnie the Pooh under the light of the lantern and they snuggled into their sleeping bags – Cocoons, they called them. I stayed up to read for a little bit, and then was asleep by 10:30pm – so early for me!

I was woken up by bright bright light streaming into the tent. I hadn’t set up the rainfly on the tent this time because the weather looked to be dry and I thought it would be nice to get some air into the tent and to be able to see the sky. In the middle of the night, this incandescent light pushed past my eyelids, and I opened my eyes, thinking I had forgotten to turn off the lantern. I hadn’t forgotten – it was the moon. The moon was practically full that night. I remembered seeing it during dinner as it came over the horizon, a huge glowing white disk. Now it was directly over the tent, bright as bright can be. When I’m at home in a house, it’s easy to forget how much light the moon can produce. I could see everything in the tent in the moonlight that came through the mesh roof of our tent.

Eventually I went back to bed and woke up around 6:00am. The kids were already up – I’m not sure how long they were up, or what they were doing, but the sounds of them chattering away to each other penetrated my sleep fog. That and the fall morning chill. Even though I objectively knew the second day was going to be colder (in the mid-50s according to the weather report), I was still unprepared for the reality of it. I hunkered in my sleeping bag as long as possible, but finally faced the reality that kids had to pee and forced myself to emerge.

We had bacon and eggs for breakfast. Then I slowly packed up the campsite with a pause for some hammock time. As I was driving in the day before, my sister-in-law called and we chatted, and I said to her, “What I really want to do is laze in the hammock and read my book.” I almost didn’t get a chance what with setting up the camp, and taking the kids on a walk and then making dinner and cleaning up dinner… but this morning, I decided that I was going to be sad if I didn’t find some hammock time. So after breakfast, and before I packed the car, I took half an hour and lazed in the hammock with a book. It was quite chilly so I packed the sleeping bags in the hammock and it was a super cozy thirty minutes.

After the car was packed up, we spent some time playing at the playground and wandering along another stretch of the lake trail, then we went home around 1pm since I didn’t want to get stuck in traffic. All in all a very relaxing 24 hours.

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. I buckled down and got some errands done off my to do list. Finally mailed those sweaters off. Processed more returns – the leggings I ordered from Pact did not fit. Bummer. I liked that they were of a thicker material, but I think the thicker material make them less stretchy.

I did a tie dye experiment with some old sweaters. The experiment wasn’t entirely successful – I tried a technique called ice dying where you put ice over the clothes and sprinkle the tie dye powder over it, and as the ice melts, it saturates the dye into the clothes. I had ice left in the cooler from camping, which is what inspired the project. I sprinkled the dye unevenly, so the grey sweater just looks like it was in a laundry accident – also I think I should have chosen a different colour for the grey sweater – the blue didn’t really show up. Even so, I always love the look of tie dye and I think I’ll try it again since ice dying was a pretty hands off way of doing it.

I had one very frustrating day where on the way to work, there was construction and a poorly marked detour and I spent a half hour driving around trying to get to our parking garage. Driving downtown is always super confusing – the streets change direction at rush hour and if you miss a fork, you’re suddenly in Virginia and you can’t just pull a u-turn to get back on track. (I mean I guess you could – I’ve seen people do it – but I’m not that brave.) I felt particularly defeated because I had planned to get to work 45 minutes early so I could get a run in before starting my show duties, but the detour/getting lost in Virginia ate up all that time. This wrench in my plan almost had me in tears. But got to work and decided to salvage it by running ten minutes to the Wednesday farmer’s market and getting empanadas for dinner and kimchi from one of my favorite vendors. So I guess it wasn’t a frustrating day, just a frustrating, despair ridden 45 minutes.

Yesterday, being Veteran’s Day, the Husband had it off, so we went to Glenstone Museum. It was a rainy, drizzly day, but lovely nonetheless. I had been a few months ago with my mom and cousin, and we didn’t get to see all of the grounds on that visit, so I was glad to go back. We didn’t see everything this time either, but we were moving at a slow pace. We meandered the walkways, stopped for lunch at the cafe (where we also started planning our spring break trip!) and took in some of the galleries. I don’t always understand contemporary art, but the docents at Glenstone are always willing to talk to patrons about it in thoughtful ways, which I appreciate.

Grateful this week for:
-Our friends, avid campers, who loan us camp chairs and coolers.
– The nice person at FedEx who helped me sort out all the various forms for shipping back to Ireland the Irish sweaters that the Husband had bought me last Christmas. Finally checked that off the to-do list.
– The three year old’s teachers. We had a parent teacher conference for her today and she’s doing really well. I’m impressed by how many letters and numbers she knows. Apparently she needs to work on sharing and letting other kids be the line leader once in a while. I’m not surprised.
-My car, which just just crossed 180, 000 miles and still takes us where we need to go. I probably wouldn’t drive it across the country, all the same.
-A phone call from an old friend and colleague whom I worked with years ago in Colorado. She is a costume person, and had made the ten year old the cutest outfits when she was a baby. Anyhow, after we both left that company, we lost touch except a Christmas card. It was wonderful to catch up.

Hard things this week: Screen time struggles/strategies with the ten year old. We are generally pretty restrictive about screen time, but the ten year old has joined a writing club at school for National Novel Writing Month, which she seems to be enjoying. However, the school has issued Chromebooks to the students in writing club so they can work on their novels at home. There has been a lot of surreptitious screen time for non-novel writing things, and precious little actual novel writing, and I just don’t have the bandwidth to constantly monitor what she is doing. We’ve caught her with her Chromebook in bed a couple of nights too and so we’ve had blanket and dictatorial confiscation of the Chromebook – which I’m on the fence as to whether it’s the best strategy since it leads to a lot of tantrums and generally unpleasant behavior (on both our parts), but it’s the easiest tactic to implement. I think there just needs to be some kind of joint discussion about screen time and Chromebook use and expectations. Also maybe have her show us what she’s using the Chromebook for. I think right now, the parents are the enemy in the screen time battle, and I don’t like that dynamic.

Plans /Aspirations for this weekend:
– Drag Queen Story Hour at the Botanical Gardens. The three year old keeps calling it “Dragon Story Hour”. I hope she isn’t disappointed.
– Birthday Party at a bowling alley for a classmate of the five year old.
– Work. It’s closing night! I’m a little sad.
– Order a new planner for next year. I use a weekly planner and I just realize there are only six spreads left for this year. When I think of the rest of the year in terms of just six spreads, it seems like the year is fast disappearing.
– Run.
– Maybe a hike. Something outdoors for sure.
– Think/ Plan holiday/ end of year things.

Looking forward to:
-Happy Hour with my mom’s group next week. I think only one or two moms can make it this time, but it’s been a while since we had one, so I’m looking forward to it nonetheless.
– This is way in the future, but our Spring Break Trip!
– Another Date Day with the Husband. He took half a day off this week to work in his garden, and we spent half an hour watching Only Murders in the Building and eating chocolate bars. It felt very un-adult like. Looking forward to more like that.

What We Ate:
Saturday: I was solo with the kids, so we had snack dinner – Soy Sauce Eggs, Veggies, Fruit, Edemame, crackers and cheese. Eaten on the floor while watching Thundermans.

Sunday: I had a matinee show, so the Husband made dumplings and cut up some veggies for the kids. They saved me some dumplings, which I ate when I got home.

Monday: Camping. Trying to keep it super simple – boxed Mac n Cheese with hot dogs and broccoli mixed in. A tip I learned from my brother is to buy the Deluxe Mac N Cheese; it come with a cheese sauce rather than cheese powder, so it’s easier to make. And then of course ‘Smores for dessert.

Tuesday: The five year old requested veggie noodle soup, so I made Chickpea Noodle Soup from America’s Test Kitchen’s Vegan for Everyone Cookbook. It’s actually a great pantry soup.

Wednesday: I had to work so I had empanadas and dolmas from the Farmer’s Market by work. The Husband made some kind of hashbrown/peppers/egg skillet for the kids.

Thursday: This was the day that I kind of lost it and told the kids that if they didn’t empty the dishwasher, we’d have toast for dinner because I wasn’t going to dirty anymore dishes until I could put them in the dishwasher afterwards. Well, joke’s on me. The dishwasher did not get emptied in time so we had bagels and baba ghanoush, and carrots and cucumbers and hummus, and fruit. Everyone thought it was a great dinner. So much for natural consequences.

Friday: Pizza (take-out) and The Secret Lives of Super Pets, which was a pretty funny movie.