Trying out the Tent

Mark and I have been slowly coming to the realization that we need a bigger tent. For the last few camping trips we've been borrowing Mark's parent's tent. Their tent is larger and taller than ours (the taller makes is so that more people can actually fit in the tent, instead of having to crawl while in the corner). With the new addition, we were worried that we might not fit so well into their tent anymore, and we were feeling guilty about always taking their good tent and leaving them tent-less on camping trips. So, a couple of month ago, Mark and I bought a new tent. We have three other tents, but they were all wedding gifts. This one is the first tent that we've bought for ourselves. It was an impulse buy (meaning we've been talking about getting one, but hadn't been looking at all - and we were killing time in between a wedding and a dinner at Cabela's), it was on sale. And it's HUGE! It has three rooms, three doors (the main one, and one for each end/room) and 5 windows (8 if you count the windows in the doors), and to reach the roof in the middle/main room I have to stand on my toes. I can stand upright in every corner of the tent. Each of the rooms has almost as much sleeping space as our old tent (ours, not the borrowed one). I think it will be a while before we outgrow this tent...

Grandma had promised Ethan that she would 'take him camping' this summer. I think she meant that she would set up a tent in the yard and sleep outside with him, although I can't guarantee that's what she meant. Summer started late this year, and went quickly. There was another snafu. Ethan has to have his tonsils and adenoids out, and tubes put in his ears. There's a two week recovery for that surgery. Julibeth scheduled the surgery for 2 weeks before school starts, so that we didn't miss any school and would be recovered in time to start, but that also cut two weeks off the end of summer. So, suddenly there was two weeks left of summer: Time to cram in all the stuff that had been put off until later. Mark and I decided it would be fun to crash their camping and try out our tent at the same time. I don't think they minded, but I'm also pretty sure they wouldn't tell us it they did. Gotta love family! :)

Here we are pulling out the new tent and trying to figure out how it works.

That's me! Reading the instructions.

Go Mark! The kids enjoyed watching.

Emily loves to swing from this pole on the porch. It makes Grandpa super nervous!

Here's Ethan inside the new tent.

And Shelly dancing in the corner

Jason playing with a door.

Emily laying down in between two open windows (with the flaps hanging down)

Mark staking down the fly.

Here's the upright tent from the side.

Ethan playing in the pool
That poor pool. The top 2 layer got a hole in it...
It never fully recovered.

I'm not sure why Shelly is standing in a bowl of water...
The tent behind her is the tent that Ethan and Grandma put up before we got there. It's a one man tent - I think it's the one that they set up to use, but once ours was up they decided there was room for them in the big tent.


Here's the tent from the front.

Yea, it's huge...