We made a campfire (I still don’t know how Tom did it with how damp everything was from our days of intermittent rain, but he’s a master at home as well, thankfully), and the kids opened more presents in front of the fire – a super special experience, I think and a Christmas I hope they’ll always remember. Perhaps the best present of the day came in the form of another family. 5 and 7 year old boys and a 2 ½ year old girl were camped just across the way, their grandfather next to us. They of course had bikes as well, and seemed to be a similarly minded family. Before long, Tom was chatting with the parents and the kids were heading off on their bikes, playing with the new toys, making up scenarios complete with play names (yes, Sawyer was Posey again).
Tom’s best gift was that the grandfather, Galen, used to sell RV’s and the three adults spent a good hour showing him how everything on it worked and how to check things and what replacement batteries to get and so on. Best of all, Galen told Tom it seemed he’d gotten a great deal on the trailer. Since he’s pretty sensitive to my seeming criticisms (I like to see it as my finding humor in it), that was music to his ears and he feel pretty vindicated about the whole thing.
The whole family was really nice and down to earth. We’re pretty sure the oldest son had Asperger’s or something similar but he was very engaged in his own way and his parents and siblings were really low key about it all, and all the kids got along just beautifully. We headed to another beach in the afternoon, Cayucas, just north of Morro Bay. We headed out for a walk on the pier, our second pier walk (our first was Santa Cruz). Sawyer isn’t sure of the whole pier thing, spends the whole time saying it’s time to get off the pier. It was windy, but Tom was pleasantly surprised by a decent break. The kids and I had a great time playing on a sturdy old swingset on the beach. It was so windy that I had to push even Jordan but got a great workout out of the experience. We walked down the beach collecting shells and looking for sea lions on the large rocks, and headed cold but happy back to the campground for a warming tomato soup, salad, hot dogs Christmas dinner – a perfect meal when finished with marshmallows toasted on our neighbors’ campfire.
It was a pretty special Christmas, being able to talk to our wonderful families and spend time with each other, not worried about home projects or paperwork or anything else. I remember from our Costa Rica/Panama trip that it took the first few days to adjust to the rhythms of being in a different kind of lifestyle. I wouldn’t at all say that it’s been a difficult adjustment, but everything seems to loosen and we adjust to a new rhythm.
I figure also that our children will always be wonderfully adaptive about things like camping trips in general, especially in inclement weather - and camping trips or travel over Christmas. Or, they’ll go to the complete opposite and refuse to do anything non-traditional (as well as despise camping in general). It’s been a pretty successful trip and I’m pretty sure they’ll go with the first option. I do hope they have a sense of humor about it all – it’s important to be able to laugh at yourself and your situation, to not take any of it to seriously one way or the other.
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