Pitching Our Tent

We were so very blessed to receive so many awesome gifts and gift cards for our wedding. Seriously. We were so thankful for all the things we were given and were able to buy because of the love of our family and friends. And one of the things we were so excited about was our own tent. We were able to buy a 6-person tent from Target with some of our gift card money (or what we now call, "Imaginary Monies.") We've had it for a couple of weeks, but hadn't used it yet. So we decided Veteran's Day weekend would be the perfect time to break it in!

We made reservations online for Sunday night, at Three Rivers State Park, in Sneads, Florida. We made our packing lists, went grocery shopping, and tried to plan out our time there. We left after church and lunch on Sunday around 3 pm (after a quick stop to grab some firewood from my parents - thanks Papa!) and made the quick, hour-long drive to the southwest corner of Lake Seminole. We had just gotten our new puppy Prim the day before, and so of course we had to bring her with us. She did great in the car though, and seemed quite excited for the adventure!

We got the tent put up pretty quickly, and got the rest of the camp set up too. The weather was great, and the park was very nice. It was definitely going to be chilly though, so Jeff got a fire going right away.

Before leaving, I prepped chicken, potatoes & veggies to make hobo pouches for dinner. So after hanging out and talking and exploring a tiny bit, we started getting dinner ready. The pouches turned out pretty yummy, even though the potatoes got a little bit burned on the bottom. It was all still good anyways. And then of course in true camping tradition, we made s'mores for dessert!

While we were eating, an armadillo ran by our campsite, and Prim went crazy over it. He stayed in the little clump of trees right next to us for a long time (which freaked me out), but Primrose just wanted to go over and investigate the whole time he was rooting around over there. Jeff wanted to let her go after it, but I was against that idea, so I had a tight hold on her leash. I guess he finally went away after about an hour or so, and then she calmed down.

Then we just sat staring at the fire and talking and enjoying the peace and quiet. It was really nice to just sit back and enjoy the silence and the outdoors and the fresh air. We sat in comfortable silence for a while, and then continued on with our normal conversation. I sure loved spending the night with this husband of mine. And since we aren't completely shut off from technology in this generation, we took my laptop into the tent and watched a couple episodes of "FRIENDS" before finally falling asleep.

And then the next morning, I got to wake up to these two cuties... :)

Well this was actually a quick nap-time later, so that's why he's wearing glasses...

We woke up right after 6 am, and after taking Prim for a quick walk, Jeff got the fire blazing again in order to make some breakfast. I was going to let Jeff be in charge of making breakfast, but I'm too much of a control freak (and I also just really like cooking), so I ended up jumping in and helping out quite a bit too. Between the two of us though, we had ourselves a nice breakfast of fried eggs, turkey bacon and potatoes.

Prim also hadn't eaten much in the couple of days we had her, so we made her a couple of eggs for breakfast as well, and she loved them! Also, we decided to take advantage of the camping tradition, and decided to make some s'mores again :) And Jeff decided to take a couple of really flattering pictures of me eating them. None are super cute, but here's the "best" one....

Since we woke up so early, we were actually super tired, so we decided to take a quick nap. Even baby Prim was tired, so she took a nap with us too.

After nap time, we hung out around our campsite a little more, then had to pack up camp to be out by noon. We then drove down to the public part of the park to explore a bit. We walked out on the boat ramp/dock, to check out the gorgeous view of Lake Seminole, and it was so calm and pretty. Then we found ourselves a nice little trail to hike close by. We walked for about 45 minutes to an hour, and Prim absolutely loved it! She seemed to really just enjoy being outside and exploring and smelling everything. She led the way most of the time, and it was a good thing we had a 24-foot retractable leash on her!

Afterwards, we all had some water, and then made our way out of the park. We found a tiny local restaurant and had the pizza and salad buffet for lunch before heading out of town. We had such a great time camping out together as a little family, and we definitely can't wait to be able to do it again! We're hoping to do it at least once more before it gets way too cold, and then we'll be excited again in the spring once the weather starts warming up a little bit. We want to check out all the state parks close to Tallahassee with camp grounds, so we'll have fun going to a lots of new campsites, and putting our new tent to good use!

Much Love,
Halie