So our camping trip ended up being Ill Fated Trip Redux.

We headed out after waking Henry up 2 hours into his nap. I didn't want himt o sleep any longer lest it make it more difficult for him to get to sleep at night. We drove the 45 minutes to the camping spot we had picked in the Pisgah National Forest, but unfortunately, September is not only a popular camping month, but also the month they do maintainance on the sites. Our perfect spot was completely full. We pulled over and Kyle and Anthony got out to look over the map all man-like and pick a new spot. About 2 minutes after we had begun our trek down the windy dirt road to our new destination, we got pulled over. Kyle had forgotten to put his seat belt back on. As I pulled our registration card out of the glove box, I noticed that it had expired. The day before. Mr. Policeman waved Anthony on by and wrote us 2 tickets, telling Kyle that if he went to court, he could most likely get them waived. We got back on our merry way, only to run into a "Road Closed" sign at the turnoff to our newly picked camping area. Awesome! We decided to screw the Pisgah National Forest and got to an organized campsite atop Mt. Pisgah where we would have a spectacular sunset.

Entering our 3rd hour in the car, we arrive at Mt. Pisgah and secure two sites, side by side. Kyle set up the tent and Henry and Noah had fun running in and out and throwing rocks at it while Kyle helped Anthony with a tricky rain fly. When I blew up the air mattress, the party really got started as the boys turned our tent into Wrestlemania 2005. They had a great time jumping and tackling each other until the inevitable accidental head bash, which ended the festivities witha loud screech. We made a fire and ate hot dogs and cous cous and fire cooked pretzels (I actually made dough!) while the boys ran around the site exploring. I bought them each a little flashlight, so they poked around long after dark, looking at trees and rocks and things. We had a great relaxing evening, save for the time Noah headed for the fire and Kyle tried to shoo him away with his marshmallow roasting stick, thereby depositing a whole and very mushy marshmallow firmly into Noah's hair which had to be removed very carefully at the freezing cold spigot.

Bedtime wasn't too torturous. Noah went to sleep like a dream, leaving Anthiny and Jess time to theirselves with a beer by the fire. Must have been nice. Though he was tired enough to be very *aherm* sensitive *aherm*, Henry was having no part of going to sleep in the tent on his own. Kyle and I decided just to call it a night as well and all three of us drifted cozily to sleep in our family tent. Until round about 4:30 when Henry woke up screaming bloody murder. He started screaming before he was awake, so I tried to soothe him back to peaceful sleep without waking him. That was a pathetic failure so I had to wake him up. The screaming didn't stop and I could feel that every other person in the campground was now awake and cursing the dreadful baby that had awakened them. Henry was officially "that kid". With no end in sight, I took him to the car to muffle the sound of his cries and play some music to calm him down. About 25 minutes later, he was asleep in my arms. Unfortunately, he awoke upon reentering the tent and screamed once more with renewed vigor. Back to the car. After 20 more minutes of this nightmare, we decided that it was time to throw in the towel. I cuddled and shooshed Henry while Kyle broke down the tent and chucked everything into the back of the van. Anthony (no doubt having been awake for an hour of screaming now) came out to help him and we were off.

We rolled back into our driveway at about 6:15 this morning. Henry had no intention of going back to sleep, so I sent Kyle off to bed, put every snack food we had in a pile in front of Henry, turned on Sesame Street and laid in a comatose state on the couch until 8:20 when I decided that Kyle had slept long enough for a shift change and went to bed. Kyle came back to bed about a half hour later saying that Henry had been running around the living room like a spazmotron, flung himself over the arm of the couch (a favorite activity) and fell alseep in that instant, top half on the chair, bottom half dangling down the side. It ook until about 1 until we had all recovered.

Now the day I had planned to be hiking in the woods exploring and watching Henry revel in nature has dissolved into me hiding in the bedroom thinking about all the work I have to do while Kyle watches football and Henry watches The Wiggles on his portable dvd player. How pitiful. Any minute now I am going to get a second wind, get dressed and take Henry to the park to play. Any minute now...