We camped for 11 days with two kids and lived to tell about it

This is our second year camping with two kids. You would think we would have been used to it. Of course not. Why? Because last year Bevin was immobile. This year she learned how to run on our first camping trip of the season. By the time our last two trips came around, she was full on running from us.

Sometime in March we decided it would be a really good idea to tack a Cape Cod trip onto a trip to Lake Taghkanic that we had planned in the wintertime. We did this for various reasons, but really, it made the most sense. And it actually worked out well. We camped for four days at Lake Taghkanic, three of those days with friends. Then we drove to Middleboro, Mass, did tons of laundry and stayed overnight at a hotel. The next day (a Saturday), we hopped on I-495 and were at our site two hours later. We have never been at a campsite in North Truro before 11 a.m.! It was pretty awesome. Our site was decent, across from the playground and the showers, but right on a main road, which was not so cool, especially with a mobile one-year-old with no concept of danger. This campground is privately run and unique in that the manager decides what site will best fit our needs. Plus we've never camped there before so we had no preferences.

I am not going to lie and tell you every minute was tons of fun. It was not. We were with each other 11 days straight, round the clock. No breaks, no nights out, no confined area to put the kids in (with the exception of the hotel room), no time ever to talk privately without the kids. We had to be on 24/7 and it was hard. But the upside was that with the first trip, we were mostly with friends and the second trip we had THE BEACH literally around the corner.

Allison and I got some quasi alone time. And by "alone time" I mean Juni and Cole played in the lake while we chatted and Keith watched Bevin.  Juni and Cole played really well together throughout the trip, in fact. They took pretend play to a whole new level (those two are so smart it's unreal!) and when things weren't going well, Juni had the maturity (being six months older) to help Cole (if he was the one in the wrong) to realize what he could do to improve things.

Cape Cod was, of course, by nature more beautiful than Lake Taghkanic, but it was also a lot harder since we didn't have friends there to lend a helping hand. A few times Bevin woke up at the ass crack of dawn. A few times both kids woke up before quiet hours. We tried to stick to our regular schedule of mealtime around 5/5:30, but still everyone got cranky anyway and it was always a struggle to keep our sanity in check. We never did get to see the sunset on the bay, which is something Keith and I always did when we went there in years past, but I just couldn't imagine taking Bevin out to the beach when she was ready to fall asleep. She would've just fallen apart instead. Or worse: fallen asleep in the car. So we never chanced it and missed out on the spectacular beauty that is the sunset over Provincetown.

But the upsides were just as vast as the downsides: we spent two full days at the beach (one on the awesome ocean beach and one on the tranquil bay beach), we spent several mornings on the beach with one or both kids (one of those was a sunrise!), we spent several late afternoons with both kids on the beach. We had only one rain day and that day was one of the most fun days of the trip, having spent it on a morning hike and an afternoon trip to the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History. We spent two late morning/early afternoons at two of our favorite places on the Cape: the Mass Audobon Society in Wellfleet and Commercial Street in Provincetown. Cole had been to both places two years ago with us, but of course, he doesn't remember them, so it was all new to him this year and oh so exciting! We biked four miles of rail trails and figured out what we need to do to get a permit next summer to drive with our truck on the dunes near our campground. We ate at some pretty yummy family friendly restaurants (don't ever leave Cape Cod without going to Moby Dick's in Wellfleet and Laura and Tony's Restaurant in Eastham). Thanks to some pretty awesome seafood markets right near where we camped, Keith grilled the yummiest fish almost every night. Which reminds me - we ate seafood every single day while we there, sometimes multiple times a day. It was like discovering a whole new world. Since then, we've vowed to eat fish at least once a week.

In the end, Cole had an amazing time. He had so much fun he didn't want to leave. He got to see up close and personal: a spicebush swallowtail butterfly, hundreds of fiddler crabs, and lots of seals swimming along the shoreline. He learned about the tide and how it pushes up the beach and pulls back down. He saw the effects of tide up close on the ocean and bay beaches and after a few days, finally understood how it moves. Bevin had a good time too, of course. She played in the calm waters of Cape Cod Bay, ran around our campsite while being chased by her brother. In actuality, he was trying to catch her for me, but she thought it was a game of chase and boy did that become a fun game!!! Not.

I enjoyed spending quality time with everyone in the sand in front of one of my favorite bodies of water that never seems to end: the ocean. I especially liked when the sun was close to the horizon- the morning was just the most beautiful time to hang out at the beach. Free pink light anyone? I think Keith liked eating good seafood and taking in the beauty that is the place he asked me to marry him.