Well, I promised you a story that would involve, inter alia, Crown Royal, soft brown dirt and vomit (the Crumpackers usually call it yarp, a Ben-ism). I’m not about to disappoint. The camping, she was a nightmare. I should explain right up front that everywhere you see an asterisk, you should mentally insert the words “Julia continues to wail.” Okay, now go freshen your drink or grab the wine bottle or a doob or a cup of tea or whatever floats your boat. CAMPSTORY! Because I love you, I am sparing you the drive up there, which almost rent us apart as a family.

3:00 p.m. Arrive at campsite. It proves to be covered in soft brown dirt. The kids set about playing with the toys they’ve brought whilst Mom and Dad tackle the brand-new tent. The tent, she is a dream. Eight feet by twelve feet, and covered wall to wall inside with soft sleeping bags and pillows. I lie back inside, to test it out, romping with baby Julia on the sleeping bags. Julia squeals and grins but is, unfortunately, COVERED IN SOFT BROWN DIRT. As are the boys. I am talking head to toe, so that they look like Caucasian children playing Indian children in some 1930s movie. In short order, Mommy, Daddy and the inside of our sumptuous tent are also covered in soft brown dirt. (Bargain interlude: sumptuous Coleman tent cost $40 at Big Lots. Bonus!)

5:00 p.m. Mommy has bought Daddy some Crown Royal and a flask to put it in, because all men love flasks when camping. By five p.m., Mommy and Daddy are at their wits’ end from bored little boys covered in soft brown dirt and a toddler, meaning Julia now rather than Matt, who has commenced to wail. Therefore, Daddy starts nipping at the Crown Royal. Mommy does not do such things, so she makes a BIG pot of camp coffee — and I mean a BIG pot, 20 cups — and drives back to the general store to buy beer for Daddy and Pellegrino water for Mommy.

6:00 p.m. The camp coffee is not very good. The Crown Royal, apparently is.* The inside of the cozy tent is FILTHY from little boys WHO WERE TOLD NOT TO DO traipsing in and out of it, covered in soft brown dirt.* In fact, Julia and Matt by now are dressed only in diapers. We cook Spaghettios over the fire and I’m charmed by the sight of Sam and Matt eating them with a big serving spoon because WE FORGOT THE DISHES, but this does not last. This does not hold at all, and the kids are going nuts and I am looking at AN ENTIRE NIGHT IN THIS MANNER. I suddenly think I WANT TO GO HOME, and before I finish thinking it, the words are out of my mouth, followed quickly by these: And we’d better decamp fast if we want to make it down off this fucking mountain before full dark.*

7:00 p.m. We barrel homeward down the mountain. The descent is fairly rapid, and considering you go rather quickly from 5,038 to 826 feet above sea level (elevations culled from roadside signs; we make no representations concerning their accuracy), *. Julia is, after a while, joined in her wailing by Matt, who is clearly miserable although he can’t articulate a reason. We theorize that it’s the pressure in their ears from the descent. This may have been true of Julia, wailing, but Matt soon revealed the source of his misery when he yarped all over himself. Not just himself, either; all over his pants and my favorite hoodie and Ben’s upholstery. We pull over and clean it up, noticing with worry that smoke and/or steam is coming out from under the hood, although the engine temperature reads fine.*

8:00 p.m. Full dark now.* Mommy is driving and crying because Boolie has not stopped crying for, like, the whole hour and fifteen minutes it takes to get off the mountain. Daddy is now street legal, so he takes the wheel and heads west and north . . .*

9:30 p.m. Daddy blessedly delivers the family to BEST WESTERN COUNTRY INN in TEMECULA, CALIFORNIA, who blessedly have a nonsmoking room with two beds. Sam, long asleep and covered in soft brown dirt, doesn’t even begin to wake up, so we shrug and tuck him into bed. (Gotta love hotel life.) Matt wakes up covered in yarp and soft brown dirt, and he is NOT escaping a bath even if Hell ices over. So I throw him in the tub and climb in with him, and pull Julia in too for good measure, and the water turns BLACK. Ben and I estimate it took us each three showers to get that crap off us. Julia — finally — has stopped crying, because we finally realized she was hungry again, and a Julia mouth which is eating is otherwise silent. And we all settle in for a night of Camping In Temecula, The Right Way This Time.

FINIS.