Camping!

Soen failing to understand the spookiness of flashlight face.

I'd been wanting to take Soen camping for about three years. Not sure why I all of a sudden decided to do it this weekend, but it had nothing to do with ditching Mommy, who has a sinus infection, and the teething baby who woke up several times last night. Actually, I did offer to not go, but wife, not knowing that Sadie would pull an all-nighter, told us to get lost.

Anyway, we wound up "camping" in a trailer park, which was a great way to ease the boy into the experience. After we set up our tent we decided to hit the pool. On our way to the pool I realized we had suddenly stumblrd upon "the south." This campground is literally 15 minutes from our house, just off a main beach road that we drive on all the time. But this place was nothing like our North Carolina. It was the North Carolina all my coworkers were teasing me about when I told them I was moving down here. It wasn't quite Deliverence country--after all everyone we met was incredibly friendly. But it was quite a shock. Their accents were quite thick. We were swimming in the pewel. One kid swam up to me and asked me if I could read because he couldn't. He was 15. But once I got over that, like I said, everyone was very friendly. One 10 year old I was talking to wanted to go in the pool with us. He said, "I'm gonna go tell my mama I met a nice man named Scott and that he'll watch me in the pool." Soen had a blast playing with all the kids.

Rather than trying to cook dinner over a campfire, we did the traditional dinner at a chinese restaurant and picked up some marshmallows, which Soen had been looking forward to for days. Back at the campsite we built a fire, roasted two marshmallows, and sat there watching the fire for all of ten minues when Soen was ready to go to bed. It was very cute. Earlier, when we were setting up the tent, Soen was all excited about it. "Daddy! We're going to go in the tent and talk and then sleep and it will be awesome!" So we get settled in the tent--"settled" means he got naked--when he realized he had to poop. So... back on with the clothes and that's when we heard a sound in the woods. Soen asked me what it was. I said I figured it was a cat since we had seen a bunch of them earlier. But when we got outside and shone our flashlight in the direction of the sound, it was a raccoon. This was the highlight of the trip. Actually, the highlight wasn't so much seeing the raccoon as it was that I had been wrong about what the animal was. As he retold the episode to me and everyone we met again and again, the story changed to how I was wrong about it being a cat and he was right about it being a fox. "Raccoon, Soen." "It wasn't a raccoon. It was a raccoon, Daddy?"

Once we got back in the tent he was wired, wanting to jump up and shine the flashlight on every noise we heard. But aside from being excited and talking for at least an hour, he was the perfect little camper. He finally fell asleep around midnight and slept straght through til 6:30. I, unfortunately wokeup at some point and couldn't get back to sleep for about two hours.

The next morning we went to a diner, then to a playground, and then to the beach. Everytime we got back into the car, Soen wanted to hold onto his bag of marshmallows. Today, after his nap, I roasted him another one (using the toaster oven), and you can see the aftermath of that. All told, camping was a big hit and he can't wait for Sadie to get older so we can all go together and he can see another raccoon.