This summer has been one of new efforts here at The Manor. One of our newer endeavors has been the family camping outings made to various spots fairly close to our home base. Some of these trips have been more successful than others. Some of them have had many great moments. I have returned from a couple vowing to never again venture out of the house and into the wilderness with any of my three spawn. But here we are, just a scant five days until school resumes, and we are once again hitting the road. Well, sort of. Our departure time was three hours ago and the sleeping bags still sit slumped in blobs at the end of the sidewalk. So far I have loaded salmon, shrimp, burger stuff, s’mores stuff, wine and margarita mix. We have at least 90 minutes of road time ahead of us and then the chore of setting up camp, cooking, cleaning…. And I do this why?

The truth of it is that the site of my three children, who due to schedules I have not seen together in one location in nearly a month,  loading and organizing has actually gotten me giddy over this whole trip. At the moment I have visions of us sitting around the camp fire tonight recalling days gone by and laughing in unison at silly jokes. The reality of it is that about twenty miles into our journey they will all three be rolling their eyes and wishing they were either watching Scooby Doo, poking around on Facebook or sucking face on some girl. Me? I’ll be thinking about the fact that the camper has a fridge chilling a bottle of chardonnay. With my name on it.