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A Camping Odyssey
Bonding on a Nine-day Camping Excursion
By Denise Steele-Darnell
Life always looks better in daylight and when we woke up it was decided we would sleep in the little tent until we could fix the big one, and we got excited about our next camping stop, Silver Falls, Oregon. Silver Falls campground was beautiful and was just what we needed to get our trip going in the right direction. It was a very family-friendly campground, and although the tent turned out to be unfixable we had a lot of fun together, even in tight sleeping quarters. We finally felt "on vacation" and were enjoying our first day of real camping.
This was one of the only days where we would not be moving to a new campground, so we were able to enjoy some time at the falls and go swimming together. All of a sudden, I began noticing a change in Ethan and realized that my son's baby teeth had chosen this exact week to start moving on in! He soon became my appendage and would not allow anyone else to touch him. Both of my children are very light sleepers, so each night I set up my noise machine I had brought to help drown out early morning noises in the hope that I would be able to sleep past 5 a.m. It worked great for Whitney, but Ethan wasup at the crack of dawn. YAWN!