of Lions and Lilies: Family Vacations - Expectations vs Reality

We just arrived home from a glorious, difficult, exhilarating, exhausting, happy, dirty, budget friendly, expensive trip :) All of the above sound contradictory, which they absolutely are! I am learning, slowly but very surely, that life with little children is never as expected, straightforward, or carefree as one might hope, but always more joy and grace filled than we could have imagined in our wildest dreams.

In an incredibly valiant step towards establishing new family traditions and family culture my side of the family planned a camping reunion in Priest Lake, Idaho. Valiant because we have not camped as a family for perhaps 20 years and because it was absolutely a step outside of comfort zones.

True to form we were relatively last minute in making our plans, for several reasons, and so ended up in a walk-up camp ground very close to Priest Lake. Our little family has always dreamed of camping but were deterred by the cost of acquiring gear, so this was a perfect impetus to start our collection and start living the dream.

13 people, 5 cars, 2 campgrounds, 4 tents, no facilities, a beautiful river, a stunning lake, a weekend of fun.

True to form, however, our two little ones returned from our glorious week on Nonna and Papa's ranch in Texas with stomach bugs. Despite the fact that we did our best to feed them only bottled water this time, their little tummies just don't seem to handle the foreign flora and so we headed into our relatively rustic camping situation with many many bouts of diarrhea daily still occurring. This really made the trip at times feel like a nightmare. This is real life, though! On social media one might only see little snapshots of the carefree moments, but in between were frantic middle of the night outhouse sprints, accidents, visits to the laundromat, the purchasing of new gear, 5:30 AM coffee on the campfire after being up all night with sick kids, and exhausted mommy and daddy at their absolute wits end.

There is something wonderful about parenthood, however, that even at your wits end the best still shines through because it is not about you. When there are other little lives relying on you somehow you find the strength. I'll never forget Joe in the middle of a chilly night in a tent, covered in poop (YES IN POOP) wiping off a hysterical child and telling them it was OK and it happens when your tummy is sick. I will never forget locking eyes over a brown bagged chelada in the laundromat as our kids licked their popsicles wondering how we were spending our long weekend in a small town laundromat with our fingers crossed that our gear would come clean. We laughed, we laughed so hard because it was either that or cry. I'll never forget falling asleep holding hands praying that this night would bring more rest than the next. I'll never forget the moments in between of carefree or ringing in our daughter's 5th birthday with campfire coffee and camp stove french toast, and playtime in the beautiful lake with doting aunts and uncles.

Despite all of the challenges we eagerly look forward to continuing the Christianson/Packard/Zohorksy/Di Lucca summer camping tradition as the years roll on. Maybe next year we will just make sure we find a place with closer bathroom facilities ;)

A few photos from our happy, dirty, hard, and carefree weekend....