Pre-Camping Adventure

First a picture of GraceMatt and I had been planning a camping trip for quite a few months now. The first one as a family of three. We have a very nice tent for two, but we were wondering how it was going to work with a little one in the mix. I had no worries about it working...till I noticed that Grace did not stay where I put her in bed, she would move, scoot, and shove her way all around the crib. That means that she would probably move, scoot, and shove her way around the tent to places that we do not want her (next to the side of the tent, against our air mattress, etc) unless we keep her contained.

Plan A. So we thought, that is alright we can just take her playpen and all will be good. That was until we set up the tent and put her playpen inside of it and realized that we would have no place to sleep because the playpen took up almost all of the tent.

Plan B. We would put her in a clothes basket. Good idea, but she is too long for that.

Plan C. We would put her in a dresser drawer. Also good idea but we did not find a big enough one and the one that we found was the exact size of the playpen...see Plan A.

Plan D. We are out of plans....

Plan E. We finally decide to give up and go and buy a new tent. Or at least see what is out there. So as I put Grace to sleep Matt whips out his iPhone and begins to search for tents. He finds a beauty at the Gander Mt. store. It was bigger, and it had everything that we thought that we wanted in a tent. So I ask, when does the store close. Matt looks at the clock and replys "14 minutes ago).... :(

The next day, the day that we would go camping, the day that we needed the tent (that we did not have yet), we went shopping. We got to the store about 10 minutes after it opened. We made a bee-line for the tents and did not see what we had found on the website, but we found two close contenders. Close but not close enough since we were standing there debating the pros and cons of each and still not liking enough to really make a decision. Finally the salesman became free and we decided to ask him about the tent we saw on the website. He stated that if we did not see it on the floor that they did not have it. Then, he paused, and said...hold on....

He walked out of the tent area only to return about two minutes later. He asked Matt to come with him (we all followed). There were four of the tents that we wanted, packed, in the corner of the store, really a place that no one would have really looked. We did not see what the tent looked like inside, we did not get to try it out, but we got it...and we are not quite sure why, but we also got it for a very large discount.

So we now have a tent that fits us all (and more if needed). We get to the campsite and begin to set it up. Pull out the instructions, the first line says...

"Make sure to set up this tent before you go camping." OOPS!