This week has been interesting to say the least. We sent Blue and The Brain off with their grandparents for 10 days camping and a family reunion we were not able to attend. This caused a bit of anxiety for me since I've never been away from any of my children for longer than 4 days, this was The Brain's first real camping trip and she's terrified of bugs. The location of the family reunion is at least an eight hour drive from where we live. The thought of them being out in the middle of nowhere without the ability to call or talk to them has been tough for me. The only comfort I have is that they are with family. I was relieved to hear from them yesterday and to hear that The Brain hasn't had any problems with bugs. I hope they are having a great time.
Some friends of ours were going camping just overnight at a campground only 45 minutes away. We thought we would join them since our other 5 children were missing out on camping. We packed up on Friday and left for a splendid adventure with our children. Peaches stayed behind and took a day trip to a water park with cousins and stayed with them until we came back. We stopped at a reservoir on our way to the camp site and had fun playing in the water and hanging out in a nice big raft. We had so much fun at the lake we knew we were bound to have an even better time at the camp site.
We pulled up to the camping area and were pleasantly surprised at how nice it was. There was green grass and big trees that made large, wonderful shaded areas and the bathrooms were nearby. I imagined little nature walks with the kids, singing camp songs around the fire and sitting outside visiting and playing games with our friends until it was dark. It was a picture perfect scene...until we got out of the car. Millions and millions (no exaggeration needed here) of mosquitos were swarming everywhere. There was no escaping them. We couldn't breath without ingesting several of these blood sucking beasts. We bathed ourselves in deep woods bug repellant and hoped for the best while we quickly put up our tent and set up camp. When we finished putting up our tent, dinner was served but no one wanted to eat outside so we all went to our respective tents and tried to eat without the annoyance of pesky little demons swarming our food and heads. Instead of finding shelter, however, we found we had trapped thousands of the spawns of Satan in our tent. I couldn't eat even if I wanted to. It was so bad Gremlin, the 2 yr old, picked up her flip flop and began attacking the little buggers shaking the entire tent as she yelled her battle cry, "DDDIIIIIEEEE!!!!". Leia quickly followed and my husband and I joined in. Pinkie was in another tent with friends and we could hear them screaming and smacking the sides of their tent. When we were finished, mosquito carcasses littered our tent floor and bedding. Not only did we forget to bring a broom to sweep out our tent, we didn't want to open the door and allow thousands more to enter our now mostly insect free abode. We instead opted to shake the tiny bodies off of our bedding and make the best of it. Just as we had determined to stay in the tent for the rest of the night we realized our young children still had to use the bathroom before we could call it a night. The thought of opening the door to our tent was like a scene out of Jurassic Park. One would have thought there were behemoths waiting to devour us the minute the tent door was unzipped. I opted to stay in the tent with Gremlin as my poor husband braved the jungle outside to take our twins to the bathroom. After he stepped outside, following the children, he tried to zip up the tent door as quickly as he could when the zipper got stuck. I found myself panicking and trying to hold the door closed while he fought with the zipper. Thousands more mosquitos came rushing in as if we had an oasis of blood for them to feast on. I was so terrified I found myself yelling at my husband for getting the zipper stuck and not getting out of the tent fast enough. He finally freed the zipper and headed off to the restrooms. Gremlin immediately took up arms and fought the tiny tyrants swarming in our tent. I joined her and just when we thought we had our crisis under control Luke and Leia unzipped the tent and came flying in with a massive swarm of mosquitos following them. I quickly zipped the door closed as my husband came to the door swatting and slapping at all the pests flying around his head and body.
"You have to stay out there and find shelter elsewhere. If I let you in THEY will follow you and I don't know if I can take it anymore!" I told him in a tight, screeching voice.
"Umm...Okay" He said kindly, realizing I was really terrified. I couldn't leave him out there, somehow I knew I would be a widow in the morning so I quickly unzipped the door and told him to hurry. He flew into the tent and quickly turned to try and zip the door closed. STUCK AGAIN! The zipper got stuck again! We have to get a new tent, this is beyond ridiculous! We finally freed the zipper again and armed ourselves with our flip flops and joined our children in the joys of mass murder. I could hear my youngest laughing wickedly as she attacked each mosquito. Each time we tapped a full mosquito, it would pop leaving a bloody mess on the tent wall. The inside of our tent was beginning to look like a murder scene on Castle.
It was getting dark we were having a hard time seeing the pesky little demons. When we thought we had killed all but just a couple, we tried to clear the bedding once again and get settled in for the night. I was the only one who had not had a chance to use the restroom. I thought I would tough it out and hold it all night, but when it gets to the point where it's painful, you know you're in trouble. But now it was dark enough that I would need someone to hold the flashlight so I could see in the bathroom. My husband couldn't leave our little ones alone, they would have opened the door to follow and left it open and then there would be big trouble. Leia volunteered to hold the flashlight; she is so brave. We quickly left for the bathrooms. I think we both received at least 100 bites between our tent and the bathrooms. I quickly took care of business and we rushed back to the tent and leaped in as fast as we could zipping the door closed behind us. We spent the next 20 minutes killing the little vermin that had snuck in with us. Finally our children were able to lay down and get some sleep.
Our air mattress had a hole in it so we took some thin foam mats to sleep on thinking it would be comfortable enough. We couldn't have been more wrong. I felt like we were sleeping on boulders and my body was feeling bruised with in minutes of laying down. I tried to make the best of it and slept off and on as I tossed and turned trying to get comfortable. The sun was rising and it was light enough to see around 5:45. I had been sitting up in our makeshift bed for at lease 30 minutes at that point. I woke my husband and tried to talk him into breaking camp and leaving right then. He grumbled and went back to sleep. I looked around our tent and could see thousands of mosquitos clinging to the outside of our tent. I woke him up and told him to look at the walls of the tent. He jumped up and said, "We need to get moving before it gets worse." We all piled out of the tent. We have never broke camp so fast in our lives. We were packed and ready to go in just minutes.
I was so thankful we didn't bring Peaches. She is so highly allergic to mosquitos, we would have ended up in the hospital. In the end I received over 200 bites all over my body and Leia received more than we can count. The other members of our family had plenty to irritate them and cause pain. I have never seen mosquitos like this. Most mosquitos can get what they need from humans unnoticed but these ones hurt. We could feel them siphoning the blood from our flesh. We had applied and reapplied bug spray and different bug repelling oils so much that when I finally got home and took a shower, I could taste the repellent in the water. EWWW!
It was so traumatizing we spent most of the next day swatting at imaginary mosquitos and poor little Gremlin would freak out over a speck of dust seen from the corner of her eye. Two days later we are still trying to sooth the burning and itching bites. They only looked worse the next day and were more numerous than we had originally thought.
What was supposed to be a fun and educational family outing turned into a scene from a horror movie. Attack of The Killer Mosquitos. We now have some pretty tall tales to share, in fact the experience has occupied most of our conversation since we returned. Next time, I am going to do my research and be sure to watch the news.
Happy homeschooling.
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