Fanshawe Conservation Area: camping review

This weekend we embarked on our first ever camping trip with our daughter Rylee (17 months). The forecast for the whole weekend called for Thunderstorms so I wasn't quite sure how things were going to pan out.

I woke up early Saturday morning to get all of the groceries, then came home and prepped the food and packed the cooler. Then we loaded up the car and we were ready to go. I did pretty well with the packing, we each had one duffle bag (not crammed), pillows/blankets, tent/air mattress, camping chairs, one cooler, two reusable bags of food, and our "camping kit". Not too bad for three people (including the baby!). Oh yes of course, and her diapers. Even still the car was pretty full.

When we got to our site we were pleased with the proximity to the washrooms. We chose site number 466. It was good for what we wanted but now that we have been there and looked around I would have chosen one of the sites that are on the bend on in "the birches" section as they provided a significant amount more privacy.

Once we unloaded our gear and set up the tent within minutes there was a heavy down pour. I was thankful that the tent was already set up so we had a place to wait it out that wasn't the car. Thankfully the rain only lasted about 15-20 minutes. 

When the rain was done we opened up our "camping kit" that was a wedding gift from two of our bridesmaids. We had not had a chance to use it yet so it was fun to see what they put in it. We did not pack anything extra knowing that they probably thought of everything and they pretty much did! After going through the box we made our first camp fire and made our dinner (stew and fresh bread). It was very yummy. Saturday night we had some friends over to the site for some marshmallows and drinks.

Rylee gave us a really hard time when it was time to go to bed. She just wanted to play and didn't want to settle, especially since it was a new place and all with LOTS to look at and do. I finally got her to sleep in the Moby Wrap after doing to creative walking around the site a number of times. However, when we went to go to bed she thought that was time to wake up and play! It took about an hour to get her to go back to bed since she thought it was fun to play around and be silly. We finally all got to sleep around 11pm.

At 2 am Sean woke up with a migraine and was quite sick. The man snoring in the tent next to us woke me up then I had to pee. Rylee of course woke up when we both got up so she was wide awake. We tried everything to get her to go back to sleep but she just wasn't having it. During this time she threw her head back and smashed the back of her head on the bridge of my nose. I thought for sure it was going to be bleeding and that I would have two black eyes the next day, although I did not get any black eyes, the pain is STILL there and the area is very very tender. Rylee FINALLY went back to sleep around 5:30am and woke again for the day at 8.

We made our breakfast (yogurt parfaits) and ate them in our camping chairs. Sean did a timmies run for us and the sites around us so I had a bit of quite time just sitting and relaxing. 

Once he got back we got changed and headed out to explore some trails. We pretty much hiked all morning.

Lunch was sandwiches and vegetables. After lunch we tried to get Rylee down for a nap. It took 1 hour and 45 minutes to get her to sleep and we all passed out for 1 hour and 15 minutes. It was a much needed nap all around! After the nap we hit up the splash pad...

Once we dried off and changed it was time to make dinner. Typical hot dogs on the fire. I also had salad to go with them. I had just eaten my hot dog and then had two bites of my salad (it was really good). Rylee lost her balanced and tripped coming within inches of the fire. I leaped up to catch her (sending the salad every where) and managed to pull her back just before she fell back into it. She was totally fine and didn't even know anything happened. My salad, however, was not salvageable. BOO! I ended up having a few of the left over veggies from lunch instead. Needless to say from that point on we moved our chairs back away more from the fire to give Rylee more walking room.

After dinner we went for a hike to the beach and saw A LOT of groundhogs. 

We went back to the site when it was getting dark and made some more marshmallows. We knew it would take a while to get Rylee to bed so we started at 9pm and we were right. It took over an hour to get her to sleep but at least she slept through the night. Sean and I did wake a number of times from the loud snoring taking place next door but otherwise night number two was a success! 

This morning we packed every thing up and were out of the campgrounds by 9am. We had all the laundry done and everything put away by noon (Rylee passed out the minute we got home for a wonderful 2.5 hour nap that allowed us to get it all done). A big part of the speedy clean up was that I am pretty organized and put all the dirty clothes in one bag, all the dirty dishes in another, and so forth. Sean cleaned off the tarp and we let the bottom of the tent dry out.

Over all we consider the weekend to be a big success. One thing that we will need to invest in for sure is a bigger tent. It is fine for just Sean and I but by the time you add Rylee and her duffle bag and her diapers + diaper bag it made for a very squished camp (hence the "broken" nose). I think it would have been much easier to move around if the tent had been bigger.

I am also very proud to report that I staying on track all weekend! Again, good planning and healthy food options were a key to my success. I also made sure we had LOTS of water to drink.

I would definitely recommend Fanshawe Conservation Area to people with families as there are a lot of things to do. The only down side I would say is that the map of the park is really difficult to read, although, that could have just been us ;). There were a lot of kids there this weekend but that was to be expected since it was a long weekend. Overall the noise wasn't too bad but as previously mentioned I would choose a more secluded spot next time. 

If you don't take care of yourself...

...no one else will.

I have a lot to share with you tonight so hopefully you're up for a long read.

Over the past two years I have been all over the place with my weight loss. I have tried many different things only to get discouraged over and over again. I would eat really well and write everything down for a few days and then fall off the wagon and binge. My blogging has been all over the place too - making it hard to follow me and know when I have posted new posts, and for that I am sorry.

So here goes, I will try to get out what I have been thinking in my head.

Weight loss is a journey, and I get so frustrated at myself for putting back on weight after I worked so hard to lose it. I want to try to lose it overnight and get back to the closet full of great clothes that I have, but that is not going to happen. I am not going to wake up tomorrow and be the size 8 that I was two years ago this very day. And you know what? That is okay.

Weight loss is a journey, a life long battle that I am going to fight. The past few weeks I have been having a lot of joint pain and feel like I am 70 years old. I'm actually very thankful that I have the pain because it has taught me a VERY important lesson. This is NOT what I want to feel like at 70 years old. I want to be one of those seniors that you see out riding bikes and speed walking to keep healthy and keep their joints from stiffening up. 

Again, I am not going to achieve this over night. I am going to have to work hard to break down the real reasons behind my weight problem. It is not going to be easy, in fact it will be the hardest thing I have ever done - but I know at the end of it, it will be worth it. I hope you will join me on my journey and I hope that I will inspire you to find your own health. Leave all excuses at the door because there is no habit that you can not break, nothing you can't accomplish if you are willing to put in the time.

I have been doing my HBL challenge for the month of May and I will give you a bit of an update. My body still really hurts, but I have been taking small steps to feeling better (stretching more, walking, hot baths ect.) I am still not noticing a huge different though with one exception. My knees are not hurting any more because I am not crossing my legs at all or pulling my legs up under me - which is VERY hard on your knees. My back is still bad but I did go to my doctors this week and I am going to do physio to strengthen the muscles. He also gave me a prescription for a med that helps with inflammation. This should also help my joints too.

This weekend I decided was the best weekend to do the La Bamba diet. It's a 3 day cleanse that helps to kick start your weight loss. A lot of people get great results by doing this but I am going to give you my honest feedback about it.

The first day you are to drink two 1 gallon jugs of the mixture of protein juice, tea, and herbal aloe powder. I had one jug of peach juice and one jug of wild berry. You have to consume 1 16oz glass every 30 minutes for 8 hours.

The mixture was not TERRIBLE - however it wasn't exactly "good". It tasted like very watered down camp juice. I drank every half hour and I was told to and was quite satisfied. I did not feel hungry once while I was drinking the juice mixture. Near the end I did start to feel like I was going to float away. I felt like my stomach was a balloon of liquid and I did not feel good - but I was still not hungry. I finished my last glass around 5:45pm. On the first day you are allowed NO food - just liquid.

I went to bed around 9:30 and was VERY hungry. I thought maybe if I go to bed I won't think about it and then tomorrow will be good because I can have a shake. Well a few things happen when I am hungry. First of all I get MISERABLE. I whine and cry and pout - I pretty much act like a child. Second I start to get really bad headaches that often end in vomiting. So I tried everything I could think of to get to sleep but I was just SO hungry. I tried drinking a few glasses of water, but since I already felt really sick that didn't do much of anything. I was laying in bed dreaming of salad so at 11:30 I finally got up and went to the kitchen to have some salad. That worked well until about 12:15 am. As I was still laying in bed miserable - my headache was getting much worse to the point where my whole head was just throbbing. I said enough already and went and had a peanut butter sandwich.

So I did not even last one day of the La Bamba diet, which is only a 3 day weight loss jump start and I will never do one again. However, it did make me realize a few things. That is not the way that I want to live - doing fad diets. I want to eat right, exercise and just be healthy - and still have treats sometimes. I want to be able to have a treat and be in control and not have that lead to a binge, which is what happens when you deprive yourself. I also go myself a nice new hair cut to be a symbol of my starting fresh. It's not too short, but to my shoulders. I can still get it up in a pony tail but it gives me lots of new things I can do with it!

Today I woke up and still did not feel good, my back was sore and I still had a bad headache. I had a good breakfast and took today one step at a time. Sean and I wrote a list of things we wanted to get done and tackled it one thing at a time. We ended up going on a hike today which was more than my back could handle so now I am paying the price for that. However, I was happy to get the exercise in and time with my hubby and my pup pup.

Sean and I rented a movie tonight and I plan on snuggling up with him on the couch and just relaxing. The weather today was so beautiful and I feel so blessed to have been able to live this day.

I will be posting my Elton John blog soon - I was just waiting to get all of the pictures. I can't believe that happened two weeks ago. I wish it had lasted forever :)