I don’t know what she was thinking, but I was thrilled at the idea…Casey wanted to go camping and I wasn’t going to stand in her way!! Casey isn’t that big on “roughing it” under normal circumstances so imagine my surprise when she told me a couple of weeks ago that she wanted to spend a night in the great outdoors. That’s right, a woman carrying five babies, at week 17 of her pregnancy (which for her is the equivalent of week 29), making plans to sleep on the ground and pee outside…AWESOME!! And so off we went to Pace Bend Park with three other couples and their kids (Dean/Emily/Hailey, Mark/Payton/Harper (Payton is 17 weeks pregnant too!), Rick/Wendi/Ty) for a night of campfires, s’mores, and bear hunts.

I’ll spare you the detailed re-cap, but rest assured the excursion couldn’t have gone better. Here are a few of the highlights: kids and cactus don’t mix, Emily is officially a camper, no bear sightings, but we heard plenty of them rustling through the trees, burn ban…? what burn ban?, it’s good to be the campers that other campers don’t want to camp next to, 30 foot cliffs within 30 feet of the tent – no problem!, golf balls and speed boats don’t mix, golf balls and the back of my head don’t mix, either!! Dean “Lightning” Yeck has the quickness of a coiled rattler, thank God for Rick’s boyscout skills, apparently camping and pregnancy mixes very, very well!!

Casey Ann did great! She spent most of the time in a lawn chair with her feet propped up, but that didn’t stop her from helping out with everything and having a great time doing it! This was the last camping trip she’ll be making for a long while which is kind of sad, but we’ll have plenty of pictures and memories to last us until we can venture out again!