Last month when Sean and Nick had their birthday party, my brother bought them and Garrett a Tent. What a great idea, we have been wanting to go camping with the boys, we were just waiting for them to get older. We went up to the cottage last week and talked about taking the tent with us, but decided against it in the end, it meant bringing so much more stuff with us, so in the end we left it at home.
We came home last Thursday (after a horrible week of cold rainy weather) and got ready for Garrett’s party on Saturday. I put the tent up in the yard and thought they would love to play in it at the party with all their cousins and friends and they did. So I just figured that they would want to sleep out Saturday night, but no they just wanted to watch TV and go sleep in their own beds. That wasn’t the case for Sunday night though, so we got them all cleaned up and even though I had to go back to work after a week off the next day, I decided that I would sleep with them and Sandy out there. It was fun, we read books, told stories and tried to get them to sleep from 10:45 till 11:30. Finally they all shut up and I started to fall asleep and thats when it started slowly at first, but then it increased. We had checked the weather channel and they said that there was a 30% chance of rain tonight, now I know when we went out there, that I could see stars, so I just figured, they are wrong most of the time anyway, why should tonight be any different?
Oh yes it was, I laid there for about an hour trying to fall asleep but noise of the rain, although wonderful, was keeping me from sleeping. Just as I was again dosing off, it hit me. That first drip of rain. I got my glasses on and got the flashlight and tried to figure out where it was coming from. The tent is full of screens and then you put this tarp like thing over the top and that is to allow the tent to breath but also keep the rain out. I noticed that I could see right out the side where the rain was coming from and figured that was where it was coming from. I poked my head outside and pulled the cover around and that was that, back to sleeping, but then my side got hit and now I was seeing that more and more drips were coming and these were from the top. As I sat thinking this will pass soon, it wasn’t supposed to rain anyway and tried to find a spot where the water wasn’t dripping on me. The other 4 slept unknowing of what was going on.
Then it hit. The drop that hits the wife in the face and I can tell you I have never seen anyone jump up so quick. She looked at me and asked why I had done that and I just pointed the flashlight at the ceiling and she said, we are going in.
Have you ever tried to carry a kid and an umbrella through the rain, its not easy and then when I finally got into the kitchen, sans umbrella I found out what ceramic tile and wet feet are like. I have no idea how Nick didn’t wake up, but we slid across the kitchen and into the pantry door. I was kind of laughing, but mostly cussing, so by the time I got the the 3rd child (oldest, longest, heaviest), I told him to get up and walk inside.
We all fell back to sleep and then the new day came and I went and looked at the inside of the tent and it had some water in it, but it wasn’t that bad. At least we found this out at home before we go camping in August. My buddy told me about this stuff that will stop the seams from leaking, so I’m going to try that and hopefully we won’t get wet again. I don’t think it would have bothered me that much if I didn’t have to work the next day, but the way. All this happened from about 1:15 to 2:00 in the morning.
That was more eventful then our whole week long trip up to the cottage, where we had one nice day in the sun, a day of putt-putt, Shrek 2 and bowling and then we came home to nice weather.
