camping camping camping - Part 3

Let me just start by saying that the above picture scares me for the future.

Let's be honest here. The third camping trip was painful. It was up Diamond Fork canyon (which was BEAUTIFUL) along with Lainey's whole kindergarten class. The only problem was Laine was running some serious sleep deficits. In addition to the previous weekends of low sleep, the day before this camp out she had her 1st grade transition day (which scared her for some reason and caused all-out crying tantrums) her Spanish school final program, and her dance recital all on the same day. (future post about those)

She went to bed SUPER late on Thursday having only eaten blue cotton candy ice cream for dinner from Maggie Moo's (which turns your poop blue in case you are curious.) Anyway- all of this sleep deprivation led to a belief that everyone was rude to her and that crying was the only answer. She spent Friday night off and on hating pretty much everyone who has ever lived.

Saturday morning was still touch and go. She did manage to decide she wanted to go on a hike to the hot springs and that was pretty fun...sometimes. At the springs she was great but by the time we were done Rom had fallen asleep in our arms and Lainey was back to an inablity to control her tears. Very hard.

At this point a third party negotiator was called in. We were driving a friend home from the camping trip so her family could stay and she could work....only she didn't want to go home as early as we felt was needed to save Laine's life. She decided her only option was to take over our parenting for awhile. Here were her ground rules/recommendations for Laine.
1. Stay away from your parents. Don't let them see you.
2. If they do say you say nothing. Only smile at them. If they are around, don't talk to anyone else either just to be safe.
3. Most important. If they tell you it is time to go say in a very sweet and innocent voice, "Dad, I'm really sorry I had a hard day but I'd really like to stay a little longer if that would be okay with you." Practice practice practice.

Little did she know that saying "I'm sorry" is against Laine's moral code. Her motto is "never never never give up." I think she read it somewhere in an office where someone had copied it for the 1000th time along with a picture of a frog being eaten by a bird. She believed strongly in it since before she could read but once she saw it in print it became her gosple truth.

Luckily for her, rules number 1 and 2 were very effective and gave Marie and I enough room to breathe in and out at a steady pace for long enough to realize that killing our daughter whom we deeply love was a bad idea. Win win win for everyone.