Just Another Wife & Mother: Our Assateague Vacation, or "When We Learned That Wild Horses Are Like Giant Raccoons And Toddlers Don't Sleep In Tents"

So, we went camping.

With toddlers.

On an island.

With wild horses.

Brilliant.

While I am not advocating, nor will I ever be a bill board for, "Camping With Toddlers!" it was much less traumatic than I thought it would be. I just mentally prepared myself for the fact that I would be doing the same job that I do every day, only I would be doing it in dirt, sand, and with sleep-deprived children.

That was pretty much true.

What I was not prepared for was the way in which they loved the outdoors and camping. Bets in particular (total shocker, I know!) loved camping. She loved sleeping in the tent. She loved getting dirty. She loved the sand. She loved the ocean. She loved waves and chasing down baby crabs.

I say all this because in the pictures that follow, Bets does not come off as though she enjoys camping. In fact, she would seem to hate it. And the outdoors. And the ocean. That's because most of those pictures were taken just before she fell asleep for an hour on my lap. Bets never naps in public. This nap on the beach indicates her extreme exhaustion level. There. I feel that I have exonerated my daughter. Someone tell her this when she's sixteen and wondering why I have more pictures of Grant from this trip.

We were also visited by wild horses. Twice. There is no photographic evidence of these visits. Here's why:

Our first visit was at two in the morning. We heard horses. Scott peeked his head out the tent, and started throwing shoes at them, trying to get them to go away. Why? Because they were eating our food. I peeked my head out of the tent, and my reaction was much more violent. It probably had something to do with the massive amount of time and energy and money that I had put into making sure my family ate well on this trip, but for whatever reason, I snapped. I charged out of the tent, grabbed a lawn chair, and went yelling and flailing in the direction of the horses. I, for one, am glad that there's no photographic evidence of that encounter. They left us alone for the rest of the night.

The next day, after a trip to the store to replace our stolen merchandise (seriously, wild horses can open Ziploc containers), we spent the rest of the day on the beach. When we returned to our campsite, the horses were back. This time, they had broken into our Rubbermaid tub, smashed our "bug tent" flipped open the cooler and eaten almost everything. Even my super-expensive organic, tummy-approved snacks. Gone. This time, I snapped a different way. It is an excellent thing that the delinquent park ranger who thought saying, "Stay away from the wild horses" was enough of a warning wasn't in the vicinity. I raked that idiotic man up one side and down the other. I'm not a stupid camper. I pack up all my food. But... NO ONE TOLD ME THERE WERE DEMON, TENT-DESTROYING, COOLER-CRUSHING HORSES ON THE LOOSE! So, obviously, I was too steamed to take pictures of that encounter. If your aspiration is to be a park ranger don't be like bleary-eyed, lazy "Steve" (real name forgotten) at the guard gate. The man was flipping useless.

I wasn't upset or anything...

We ate trail mix and peanut butter out of the jar for dinner that night. And we buried our s'mores rations in the sand so that the horses wouldn't find them.

All that to say... we're probably going again next year. And we've already devised a very rigorous, continually-locked-in-the-car food system.