First Trip: June 19th, Clear Creek Campground on Smith Lake.
http://www.recreation.gov/camping/clear-creek-al/r/campgroundDetails.do?contractCode=NRSO&parkId=70198.

We arranged our first camping trip with our good friends Bobby and Mary and their two daughters Olivia and Addison. They live in Kentucky and love to add new stickers to their super cool RV-world ubiquitous USA map/sticker thingy..

 and they needed Alabama.  Plus we all really like to hang out. 

We store our RV at a U-haul in Fultondale, and in order to start our first ever camping weekend we had to go and hook up the RV to the suburban ourselves for the first time (when we bought it Opelika did it for us).  We managed to get out of there after some "slight" delays and "minor" issues, which we are sure we're quite ready to fess up to yet. Luckily this campground is not far at all from Homewood and so still go there before dark.  We had an entire loop to ourselves and our site looked like this...
 

You can see Bobby's nice Diesel truck way in the background, as there site was behind ours.  I can safely say that having Bobby and Mary there was essential to me being to a) back into that spot and b) being able to actually hook the thing up. 

This was a quick camping trip (2 nights) but we filled it up.  The kids rode roughshod all over the paths that were between every site, we hit up the lake, made tie-dye tee shirts, and celebrated our maiden voyage with a cake that Mary had made special w/ our RV on it.  I'll have to upload some of those photos later.

The Giles Get an RV, everything Old is New Again

UPDATE: ~June 2016.

We have been camping a great deal with many of our  old DC friends.   They all have campers.  We don't.  They have been trying to rectify that imbalance by insisting that we get an RV.  After our last Memorial Day camping trip with this crew 



I relented and told Jenn that if she would do the leg work, I was on board with us jumping into the RV world.  I feel bad publically admitting that I made my wife do all the work, but I had a big grant due that I needed to write in June and I really couldn't focus.  But she did awesome and found us a great deal at Opelika camper center, a 2015 Forest River Salem Cruise Lite...



The first drive home was terrifying, but luckily uneventful, save for Calvin getting his head stuck between a wrought iron gate surrounding the porch of the camper center.  Jenn had actually got up really early to head down and seal the deal, and I followed a few hours behind with the kiddos.  While they set up the camper to be towed we took the kids to see the Angry Birds movie (meh).  Despite my absentee role in the research that led to the RV purchase, I was responsible for towing it back home.  We got a nice tow package that includes the sway bars and weight distribution hitch. They work b/c there really isn't any sway, but it still bounces you around a bit. That just takes some getting used to I suppose.

Cal being Cal

Calvin being Calvin.  He is as sweet as can be and a very laid back little guy.

Sleeping through the night

Calvin is happy to report that he is pretty consistently sleeping through the night.  About 10 days ago he started sleeping from 9:30pm - 5:00am with some brief stirrings around 3am (we were able to get him back down those nights with a pacifier).  Over the weekend Calvin stretched that sleep time to 9:30pm - 6:30am with no wake ups.  Mom and Dad are smiling as big as he is - we just don't look as cute doing it.

(I'm certain that since I am sharing this, Cal will most certainly revert.  But I couldn't resist sharing the news and the pics.)

A little cuteness

Calvin has become very smiley and chatty - so we thought we would share some of the cuteness.

Warren's 3rd Birthday

We had Warren's 3rd Birthday party at Wee Flip in Vestavia Hills.  We invited his classmates from daycare as well as the kids of some folks that Keith works with.  It was a great space with lots of fun things for the kids to climb on and jump in.

For all of the cool stuff that was there to do, when we were done - we asked Warren what his favorite thing was.  And he said....."The Gate".  Nice!!!

Some action shots of the kids playing.  It was really fun to watch them play.  Since they all knew each other from daycare, they played really well together.  It was funny to watch them laugh and joke with each other and even shout at each other from across the room.  Definitely a taste of how grown up these kids are becoming.

After they played for awhile, we headed to the party room for cupcakes and "Happy Birthday".

After cupcakes, we did a little "parachute play".  They had the parents around the edge of the parachute and the kids on it.  We started with just shaking it so it created waves that the kids were supposed to run on.  Well - we have no pictures of that because Warren freaked out and ran off of it, screaming and crying.  Guess he just wanted the gate.  He calmed down and did actually play under the parachute with me when they had the parents stand up and wave the parachute up and down.  The party closed with a "Birthday Fort" with the parachute, which Warren tolerated.

The kids and parents all had a great time.  We heard from many parents that they hadn't been there before....but loved it.  Warren was the first birthday in his class....we have a ton coming up over the next month or so.  I'm guessing we'll probably be back to Wee Flip again.

Cow Poop is Funny

One of the highlights of our trip to the farm was getting to go down to the creek to play in the water.  Warren conned just about everyone - Grandma Sally, Banna, and YaYa (Jessica) - into taking him down there so he could splash in the water.  And they certainly encouraged it as well.





As you might have noticed at the end of this video, Cousin Chase found himself sinking into some cow poop across the creek.  Warren thought this was VERY FUNNY.  And proceeded to talk about it - LOUDLY - the next evening at dinner at Olive Garden.