If you know our family, you know we love to camp. We have a big camper, we've taken it near and far, and I'm always looking for camping hacks. We walk or drive through campgrounds and I'm eyeing up other people's set up - do they have a camp kitchen? Is there an outdoor rug? Where did they get that gadget? Oh that's smart...we should try that. You get the idea. One of my biggest areas of research is how large families camp. There's only so much storage in a camper for food and clothes...and the picnic table provided has a limited capacity for seating. Since there's 6 of us, we're sort of on the edge of being considered a large family. But as we grow, so do our needs....you guys, my brain has always got about 57 tabs open. If given 5 minutes of time to 'research', I usually scroll things like pinterest or marketplace sites for ideas and supplies to solve problems or make things better.
But this isn't about camping.
I wish it was! We did some camping this summer and it was nice. We talked a lot about how if all the schools went virtual, we might hit the road and do school from the camper. The big guy got me all excited about being near a beach or spending lots of time outside...alas. School for our 4 kids is in person. Which is good!! I prefer that. But it's a rainy day today so yeah. Thinking about other weather.
This post - this post is about some camping tables. "But listen to yourself, you said it wasn't a camping post." I know, I know - I'm getting there! Back in early March, in case you forgot, we began hearing rumbles of this virus, right? And there was talk of school shutting down. Um....if you have a personality like mine, you were starting to get 'amped up' and your brain started spiraling and you felt like some doomsday preppper, constantly plotting in your head what you would need should the world shut down and access be cut off to...to...to...well, anything and everything! Yeah. I was doing a lot of that. We discussed homeschooling (ack, sounds of air whooshing in and out of the brown paper bag, pupils dilating, what? I can't teach, oh wait, I am a trained teacher, ack, noooooooooooooooooooooooooo, ack!!!!) and all I knew was we needed desks. Apparently everyone in the area had the same thought. I am cheap and don't want to pay for desks. Nor do I want 4 of those huge antique one room school desks either. AFter a sleepless night or 2 (and probably scouring the usual spots) I had an epiphany!! CAMP TABLES.
I busted out of my 'A Beautiful Mind' corona prep cave and searched for camp tables on the shopping site named after the forest it is most likely destroying. The best thing about camp tables is that they are smaller than card tables and they still fold up and can be stored easily! I cannot have more random furniture added to this crazy house and yet a tv tray is too small for a computer and some space to do school work. Enter the camp table. I'm over here giving myself all kinds of pats on the back!!
Last school year, the kids did 10+ weeks of school at home. Two kids were at the camp tables, two kids at the used but perfect for us small wooden desk/tables. Dave usually sat in his recliner. At the end of the year, I was so happy to put the camp tables away, happy to use them for camping instead of school and oh so very hopeful we would never use them in the house again. Of course, here we are - out of my 4 kids, we have have 5 instances of a kid being quarantined/home from school due to exposure/close contact to a positive test. And yeah, you guessed it, since Dave has been home for weeks already, that means the camp tables came back out! He's been using both of the wooden desks for teaching from an Elmo projector. All in all, I think w/4 kids in school, 5 instances in 3 months isn't too bad. (I feel bad for them though, since it means they miss out on fun stuff and extra curriculars.) I have decided that this is the year of the camp table though. I don't think I'll ever shake the connection to school at home. They will always remind me of this time. It feels weird saying that since 'this time' isn't over yet...but...I dunno. I felt like waxing poetic about it today. I am thankful for camp tables. I am thankful for this memory that is 'in progress'. May it only last a year!
