Camping...how do you pack for everyone?

As I've let you in on how we do camping thus far I hope you have been enjoying this series. I've enjoyed writing it! Someday I hope that this blog can be used as a tool for my children to see the journey's we went on as a family and that I personally traversed.

Packing...how to begin with a large crowd. For years I would flounder but a few years ago I struck upon the idea of keeping my list from the previous trip and add to it those things I wished I would have packed. That morphed into a word document that I update every trip. Today as we begin to pack the younger kids know that Mom will pull the list off the computer and once printed it is the way we make sure everything important gets packed. The list includes things like clothes (that get put into marked baggies for each person for a day's outfit), chairs for the campfire, food, clean out the cooler and what to fill it with, medicine in case someone gets sick, things for the dog if he comes with us, etc.

The other thing I've learned over the years is that even though the list helps us so much, it is not a hill to die upon. If we forget something it is not the end of the world. Relationships are more important than something as simple as buying another toothbrush because even though I told a child to put their toothbrush in a bag they didn't. Grace is so important in parenting. Maybe someday we will get somewhere without forgetting anything but the important thing is to have fun.