We're Going Camping

...this weekend. In a few hours, actually. I'm busily working on getting things ready. (Obviously, I'm busily PROCRASTINATING by writing about getting things ready instead of actually getting things ready.) Here's our weekend menu, almost all of which I'm preparing in advance to simplify things at the campsite-o-kids:

Friday Lunch: Still Home, eat leftovers

Friday Dinner: Roman Soldier Meal, salad, carrot & celery sticks, s'mores--of course
Turns out that the most common camping meal recommended by most of the websites I consulted closely resembles a fun activity for the first chapter of our history curriculum, which we're due to begin in a couple of weeks. It's a meal in foil: hamburger patty, slice of onion, sliced carrots, sliced new potatoes (ours have olive oil, kosher salt, and rosemary), to be wrapped tightly in foil and put into the campfire coals--while reading our history chapter on the Roman soldiers, of course. :) Last night I chopped and prepared all the stuff to go into the foil wraps.

Saturday Breakfast: Scrambled Eggs w/Ham (pre-scrambled in a container, ham pre-chopped)

Saturday Lunch: Cold Cut Sandwiches, Apples, Milk

Saturday Dinner: Baked Beans w/Hot Dogs, Cornbread (JPD and KLD helped make this last night), Salad, maybe-some-kind-of-dessert-I-dont-know-yet.

Sunday Breakfast: Oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon, raisins(all pre-measured); also bagels for a backup.

Snacks: I'm bringing all the random one-off granola bars and teddy grahams from our cupboard, plus little fruit cups, raisins, chips, etc. Also, bottled Starbucks (we may need more coffee than this) and Diet Cokes (of course) for the grownups. (Maybe some adult beverages, but maybe not--adult beverages just make me more tired, which is not something I'm needing to be lately!)

Being a camping rookie, this all seems like a big deal to me. For example, thinking ahead that we'll need brown sugar for oatmeal on Sunday morning, so I should measure some and put it into a container. And pre-scrambling the eggs and putting them in a container. All of it, really. While it's kind of nice to leave my home kitchen behind for the whole weekend, and relying on restaurants really seems to take a lot of the "camp" out of "camping," I must say that the jury is still out on whether camping is actually a vacation. Wait--what am I saying? No family "vacation" is actually a vacation for the Mom. Silly me--I always forget.

Now I'm off to actually finish packing all of the above...