First family camping trip- Part 1: Uncle Matt's

James got to eat at his great-grandmother's kitchen table which my brother now uses.

James sitting with Uncle Matt wearing one of Matt's jumpers that my mother saved for the past 36 years for just this sort of occasion.

When contemplating what to do for a vacation this summer we realized it was the first one where we were a family rather than a couple and taking James into account made a huge difference in the options available to us. We finally decided that camping could be a wonderful family vacation- one that both of us did with our families when we were little. After discussing the many places we could go we settled on Hurricane Campground in Jefferson National Forest just across the border of NC into VA. Since the campground is first come first served we decded to prevail upon my brother, Matt, in Blowing Rock, NC for the first two nights (July 3rd and 4th) thinking that the holiday weekend probably had the campground filled to the max.
While at Matt's we discovered that James can accidentally end up UNDER the blowup mattress pad of his PeaPod. This was quite a shock to us- me in particular. I had put him to bed awake like normal and he went to sleep without much fuss, but later in the evening Blowing Rock celebrated the 4th with early fireworks (on Saturday night) and the huge booms kept waking James. Tim and I were watching a movie and heard James wake up several times fussing and one time REALLY screeching/crying but they were all for such short bursts that I didn't go in. Once we finally went to bed in the dark as to not wake up James (we were all sleeping in Matt's spare room) I asked Tim to just peek into James' tent while I shined the flashlight to make sure he was okay. Tim looked....and looked...and then said 'what's this?' pointing to the mattress pad that was elevated. I looked in horror to see that James was UNDER the mattress. My stomach sank and I felt like I was going to puke. Thankfully Tim kept his cool- quickly unzipping the PeaPod and lifting the mattress to see James curled up under it. I was shining the flashlight at him and it washed out his skintone so I in my panicked mind thought he was looking pale from not breathing, Tim lifted him out and back on top of the mattress- and in that my mind everything was going in slow motion- but James didn't stir even with the flashlight beaming him and even being moved. Ack. But a second later James made some sort of sound and the tears started streaming for me. I got into bed and just said over and over through tears of relief- 'Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you....' to God for protecting my precious babe. Poor little guy must have been scared being trapped under the mattress and that was why he had screeched. Next time I won't assume it is the fireworks!

You can see all the temptations on the left side-not many stayed on the shelf once James was done exploring.

James enjoyed pulling all of Matt's meticulously arranged DVDs and video games off the lower shelves (and I think put tooth marks into one before I could get it away from him). And he could get to all these treasures more quickly than I would have guessed because he also decided to start actually crawling. The first night when I blew up our queen air mattress James looked at it and without a moments hesitation climbed up on it and CRAWLED on hands and knees in a sprint to the outlet on the far wall behind the pillows. That was the beginning of a very fast moving James.
We stayed Saturday and Sunday nights with Matt (both evenings having dinner at Matt's Outback and having some specialty dishes he created and which we thoroughly enjoyed and shared with James - crab, lobster, scallops, etc) and headed out Monday morning to Hurricane Campground- less than a two hour drive north.