My purse is missing.

Which is highly unfortunate if I ever plan to actually, you know, leave this house. Around here, we have an uncanny knack for losing (and destroying, and misplacing, and breaking, and hiding, and shredding to pieces and blasting into smithereens) a wide array of random objects. My purse being one of my least favorite victims.
The camera is in it. So I can not yet share any pictures from (the first half of) our camping trip. Why only the beginning? I was too annoyed busy by the second half to care about things like "first camping trip together memory keeping memorabilia."
The last time we went camping, it was just Bob and I. ♥Bliss♥ Oh, sweet, sweet, delightful, peaceful, bliss.  We would backpack. Way up in the mountains. Where there were no people. Especially not ones under 4 feet tall. It was quiet and serene. Everything this trip was not. ☺ (I put that smiley face there to make it look like I'm smiling. But I'm really not. Smiling. It's a computer trick I like to play on you since you can not actually see me. Not Smiling.)
In hindsight, I believe we may have done well to have eased into it. Slowly. With perhaps a couple kids at first. Then, maybe 3. Then,  4. Moving our way up, one by one, to the entire brood. Waiting this many years to take the whole team who have never been before and trying to quickly, on the spot, teach them a crash course of Camping Etiquette 101 ((for short folks with excessive energy and a propensity for *it seemed like a good idea at the time* foolishness)) might have been too much to ask.
This class included (rather obvious) matters such as:
1) If you keep poking the tent with a stick, you're likely to make a hole!
and
2) If you tip your chair forward while sitting around the fire, you might fall in!
also
3) If you wave your flaming marshmallow stick around, you could catch someone's hair on fire! (Yes, you could. Remember that regrettable event that occured during the summer of 09? Anyone? Anyone?)

For having a crew our size, (which includes 2 four year old boys and a five year old boy and a two year old girl, and a six year old girl, and a seven year old boy, and an eight year old girl, and no teen-aged helper children) things went remarkably fine. There were no trips to the ER! (See that? I'm counting our blessings. What optimism!) **☺**
Our friends (yes, we are still friends!) think the Deutschlets did quite well. I'd have to agree. All things considered, (like Yogi doesn't make those camp sites big enough for tents like ours) the trip was a successful and fun outing for the children.

Thankfully, it's only the parents that are {slightly} traumatized.