Camping in Ruidoso!

Other than the birth of Michael (visit his blog for details on that adventure), our first adventure of the year was over Memorial Day Weekend! The weather was forcasted to be in the 100's here at home and Shanam REALLY didn't want to stay for the three day weekend, so early on in the week he passed the idea by me of going to the mountains. Sure, Mikey was only 4 weeks old, sure, I was still healing from birthing a baby a month ago, sure, we now had a very mobile toddler, but ... how could I say no to the mountains and more importantly, how could I say no to my loving husband who works so hard to provide so much for our family! Despite all the reasons that could have kept us home, it turned out quite well! We had to end our trip early, but it wasn't because of any of those reasons...

We arrived Saturday afternoon and immediately set up our new 8 person tent. It was awesome!!! We had to get a couple shots from each angle just to relish how much space we had. We had one room with Annabelle's pack n' play and our air mattress and the other room held all of our stuff. It was amazing to actually be able to stand up inside! Can you tell I'm happy to be out of our 3 person tent? :)

After we set up, we broke out the snacks (per the little one's

 request) and just sat and enjoyed our surroundings :) I just love the smell of pine trees!

Annabelle had a blast exploring the wonders of a tent and absolutely loved her little space in the pack n' play. Camping was a whole new experience for her this year, because she actually new what was going on :) Mikey did great, as well, for his first time camping. As long as he has mommy's milk and a warm place to sleep, he's a happy camper...literally :)

The fun began during the first night. The kids went down just fine, however, the wind picked up big time!! As I was laying in bed, I could hear when a gust of wind was coming. I would first hear it rushing through the tree tops, then the force would hit our tent so hard and make the loudest sound as our rain flap beat against the tent and our poles groaned and creaked. Each time a gust hit, I pictured the whole tent falling down on top of us! Amazingly, everyone else slept through it just fine. It was only the worried mother hen that got about two hours of sleep. It didn't help that there was a raging party going on outside our tent from about midnight to 3 am that kept Annabelle up. Oy, what a night!

The next day was just as windy. We left our tent that morning and prayed it would still be there when we returned :) For breakfast, we met up with some friends at our favorite restaurant, Log Cabin Restaurant, and then went on a beautiful hike by our campsite. Annabelle loved watching the dogs run around beneath her and Mikey, of course, slept through the whole thing. It was so wonderful to be able to get out and hike in the mountains. My pace was like a snail's, and the "hike" was more like a leisurely stroll through the woods, but I've got to start somewhere :) I didn't want to push myself too hard and get mastitis or something.

The kids were all asleep when we returned to our still-standing tent, so we put everyone down for a nap, including myself :), while Shanam cooked us up some lunch over the fire. A little while later, while we were awake and hiding in the tent from the wind, a HUGE gust came and actually broke one of our poles entirely in half! I was able to catch the tent above me and yell to Shanam to come help. He was able to rig it back up, but that was it for our camping adventure. I was not about to go through another sleepless night in a now broken tent.We packed everything up and headed home :) What a trip! Even though it was short, we were glad we did it.