Gua-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la!

Last week we watched our tantrumy two year old screaming on the floor and thought, lets try tent camping. Logical? Probably not. But, despite all signs pointing to the probability that tent camping would be a literal screaming mess we packed up little blue and headed for the foggy ocean views of Highway 1. We planned our trip around nap times of course and right on cue Mo slept for the first two hours, waking up just as we got to the little hot dog stand in Bodega where we planned to get lunch. Parental high fives! From the hot dog stand, little blue's gps told us we only had an hour to go North! Books, Elmo videos, and Pie-pad (what Mo calls the Ipad) time should fill that right up! Exceeept....for the extra hour of stop and go road construction traffic that we sat in. Ergh. I will admit we got a little tantrumy towards the end. But boy was it worth it! We pulled into our campsite, nestled between the ocean and the river, smack dab in the middle of the redwood trees.

Our tent actually went up quickly, the air mattress inflated, and...we only had a small setback when Molly concluded that we had erected a bouncy house for her entertainment in the middle of nowhere. Hmmm.

Time to run around in the gorgeous grandeur of the redwoods surrounding us! Mo, don't you want to run and play? "Noooooooo!!!!! Huuuugggg!!" It is amazing how a two year olds screams can echo in the absolute peace and quiet of nature. Yikes, said all the old people with their tiny lap dogs ;) So we hugged Mo and went for a walk in the woods. Luckily we came across a treasure trove of blackberries and Mo decided the redwood forest was pretty awesome after eating about a thousand berries. That should be interesting later, in a tent, in the dark (spoiler alert-it didn't happen).

After our walk we hunkered down to eat some campfire grilled trader joes o's. Perfect food choice, as Mo ate almost a whole can herself. Parental high five number 2 !

Then it got dark, and the fire was a little too scary so we retreated into the tent for a little pie pad time in preparation for whatever the night was to bring.

I unzipped our nice warm sleeping bags and laid them underneath us all because I was afraid Mo would be freezing. Then I covered us all with fleece blankets and it was lights out. Mo vehemently refused any sort of blanket but fell asleep after an hour of alligator rolls, ear pinching and eye poking (guess who was on the receiving end of that). Mo slept like an angel, BLANKET FREE, while Matt and I FROZE! How do kids not feel freezing temperatures?! Our saving grace came when a raccoon poked me in the head and I told Matt "I think we have a little friend." Little did I know the raccoon poking me in the head -from outside the tent-was not our problem. Matt sat up and said "Shoo, get out of here!" Uh-oh! Those freaky little raccoon hands had unzipped our tent door and was halfway in our tent!! He didn't care that Matt had chastised him so what's a guy to do? Matt had to smack a raccoon, in our tent, in the middle of the night. What!? Mr. squeakers got the hint and ran away complaining to his friends the whole way back to the trash cans. Then the band of raccoons had a very loud chattering conversation and I thought we were goners. The good news was that the raccoon awakening allowed us to zip up our warm mummy bags and we were all able to sleep for the rest of the night until 7:30am! Major parental high fives. We successfully tent camped with a two year old!! We happily skipped rocks and went for a river walk, reveling in our amazing success...to be continued...will they survive day two?