Oh, the annual outlaw camping trip. Love the outlaws, hate the trip. I have a very bad record with this trip that goes something like this:

• 
  First time we went it was June, and I was 6mo pregnant with my DD. I was walking to the outhouse without a flashlight when I fell over one of those fire pits made out of hard heavy metal. Belly flop onto the ground. Broke my first bone/toe, and had a pretty sore leg the entire trip.
• 
  Second trip it was July 4th weekend. It was so hot, and the campgrounds were packed! Heathen son was wild. Heathen daughter was 9mo, and still BF. Course the outlaws would have been disturbed by anyone NIP, so I nursed at least 3x a day in a overheated tent. Fireworks idiots kept lighting them off right over our tent where our kids were sleeping, and we had to keep shaking off the tent. I begged Heathen Partner to let us go a hotel for the next night, which we saved up for, but he declined. Really was just no fun for me at all.

This time we opted to only go for one night, and stay in a hotel because we thought the campground would be jammin again. It wasn't. It was supposed to be hot as hades. It was. MIL and FIL convinced us not to bring any food because they would "take care of all that", but when we got there they had nothing but soda! Luckily, we had an awesome breakfast with them at a local diner beforehand so we weren't too worried about food. We went later that afternoon to check into our hotel, and fed the kids some cheezits. We were gone for about an hour and a half. When we got back the IL's were gone. Grocery shopping we were told. Well, 4 hours after they left they came back with minimal groceries. My young children had subsisted on more crackers and chips, but by 6:30pm we realized that nobody planned on cooking family dinner until 7-8pmish, and we had nothing for the kiddos.

So we left for the night, and got our kids a meal. I'm not pissed pissed, but DH was. They had him convinced that we shouldn't bring a cooler for food or anything, but really had we thought about it, we should have. That is just the way they are. Heck, we didn't even want to go. We told them we would prefer not to have to travel on 4th of July weekend, but they really enjoy camping that weekend, and BIL had come up from MO, and they made DH feel guilty for not wanting to come. He's a sucker for his family ;)

Next morning it was raining hard. We told them we were just going to go home from the hotel, but they said it wasn't raining hard, and besides "You can hang out in our camper if it rains!" So we went out to the campground. There was absolutely no room for our family in the camper or under the screened tents. It was POURING. We stood around in.the.rain. for about 15 minutes and then left. Sigh.

Again, that is just the way they are. It really isn't a big deal, but we sure could have saved our money, stayed home, and relaxed. I really would have prefered it.
I'm just saying "no" to next years trip.