The Impromptu Daddy-Daughter Date

This past weekend, we travelled to the far reaches of the state of Utah with a group of friends to see a few of the arches at Arches National Park. The trip began well and finished the same. We ended up in a spacious Moab-style campground (that means there was more dirt and sand than grass and trees). The rock formations around the campground were very impressive from their bright color to their lumpy form. We cooked chicken, potatoes and planned to have broccoli. Thankfully, the broccoli did not cook fully, thus providing me an excellent excuse to not consume it. We also made 3 kinds of cobbler! Not one of them was bad, in my opinion, but the peach-raspberry was probably the favorite.

As the night wound down, we tried to lay Sabrina down for the night. It was her first experience camping and she wasn't prepared for the routine. Bethany tried to stay with her in the tent hoping she'd fall asleep with mom nearby. Sabrina resisted with her best efforts. I tried taking her for a little drive thinking that the familiarity of the car seat and the hum of the van would settle her down and help her fall asleep. She resisted that too. We got back to camp and tried to rock her, bounce her, hold her and then lay her back down in the tent with mom. Sabrina wasn't going to have it. The tent was too dark, there was too much commotion going on, not to mention the mesmerizing campfire that all of the kids worshipped with their marshmallows on sticks. There was no way she was going to let herself succumb to any notion of sleeping.

Once we eventually corralled all of the family into the tent and into their sleeping bags, we thought we had done it and she'd finally sleep. Not a chance! She went from laying in her sleeping bag to rolling out of it to dancing around the tent. Each time we put her back in her sleeping bag, she'd pop out! What a persistent little bugger! I think it was around midnight that she started to cry when we'd put her back in her sleeping bag. I tried letting her sleep on the air mattress with me. She eventually pushed me off and then got up and wanted to try the cot with mom. Bethany ended up on the air mattress and I ended up on the kiddie Dora the Explorer sleeping bag (which isn't worth a darn for a guy my size.) Goldilocks has nothing on Sabrina because she had tested papa bear's bed, mama bear's bed and baby bear's bed and none of them sufficed! She cried and cried and I thought to try the van one more time.

To shorten this long story, we made it into the van just before 3:00 a.m. and just laid there for a half hour. When that didn't work, I decided to take her on a sight-seeing trip around Moab, hoping that Moab in the dark would put her to sleep. Nope. She was fine to watch out the window. So I resorted to a little bit of Michael Buble. I played Lost over and over, singing along with him. It did the trick! She was out like a light. We drove back near the campground and parked some distance away so that I could keep the van on for a while and not wake our friends. I fell asleep a short time later. Sabrina was courteous enough to give me around 75 minutes of sleep before she woke up and insisted that I be up too.

Before we went on the trip, Bethany and I were discussing whether or not to try and leave Sabrina with family while we went on the trip. I believe my exact words were, "Let's just take her. It won't be a big deal. She'll be fine."

I was wrong.

The silver lining in the ordeal is this: because we could not get cell phone reception at the campground, I could not send or receive email. I had a few emails to type up and send in connection with my church calling that I should have taken care of Friday. So because we were out driving around at 4:00 in the morning, I was able to pull over and send them off! How's that for a positive spin?