The BEST Christmas Present Part II: A Camping Nightmare

It was the day after Thanksgiving and in true Randy/Mel fashion, we planned an adventure to make the most of the holiday with our friends the Peterson's.  We loaded up the Brown Egg (aka van) with new and almost-new camping gear and headed to White Beach, a camping spot on the Pacific Ocean side of the island.  We set up our brand new screen tent, lit our brand new lantern, and turned on the stove to make dinner.  In case you didn't know, I've got mad camping skills when it comes to packing for an over-nighter.  I even thought to bring an extra pot to heat water for hot chocolate in case we got cold.  And it did get cold.  And even windy.  Just as we were thinking we should take down the screen tent before the wind could launch it into the sky, a huge gust lifted half of it off the ground bending 4 of the 8 poles, and shattering the lantern.  We quickly loaded everything back into the van except for the tent with the sleeping boys and made a bad decision to tough it out rather than pack up and go home.  We went to bed around midnight and lay in bed staring into the darkness, as visions of a flying tent spinning out of control (kind of like Dorothy's house in the Wizard of Oz) left us too nervous to sleep.  The roaring wind made our tent flap wildly and loudly all night long.  It was a wonder the boys could sleep through it.
Randy finally yelled in my ear, "I'm going outside to try to tie the tent down!"  He was gone for quite awhile but did his best to rope the tent down to heavy pieces of coral, the picnic table, and our van.
We were up at the crack of dawn to a beautiful sunrise and more wind.  While the husbands took the boys exploring, Rebecca and I attempted to make breakfast.  It took nearly an hour to cook the eggs as the wind kept blowing out the flame.  Just as we were sitting down to eat our runny eggs, we heard a loud ripping sound as the wind pulled our tent off the ground, ripping a huge hole along one seam.
"That's it!  We're getting out of here! Now!"  I yelled.  The kids quickly climbed into the vans to stay out of harm's way as the adults frantically began throwing everything into the vans.  Randy grabbed a garbage bag and dumped all the breakfast dishes and food into it while I emptied out the tent.  We had both tents and all our belongings loaded in a matter of seconds.  Unpacking wasn't going to be fun.  As we drove home I quickly calculated how much damage the wind had cost us.
Broken Screen Tent: $100
Broken Lantern: $60
Broken Tent: $100
(Camping with the Peterson's:  Priceless.)
We got home and unpacked the mess of camping gear.  I started to get things ready for dinner and couldn't find any of my pots and pans we had taken camping.  I figured they'd been thrown in the Peterson's van and called them to see if they had my pots.  Of course, as my luck would have it, they didn't have the pots.  Randy and I searched through the mess again but still nothing.  Of course I blamed Randy right away.
"Where did you put my pots?"I said as I began digging through broken tent poles.
"I put them in a big garbage bag so they wouldn't get everything dirty,"  he said sensibly.
"Ohhhh.  You mean the big, heavy garbage bag I threw in the dumpster right before we left?"  I said, as I realized there was a reason that bag was way too heavy to contain only garbage from one night of camping.
My stomach churned as I realized I had thrown away all but one of my pots, not counting the one I had never replaced from the time I nearly burned our apartment down.  The only pot I had left to cook with was a huge dutch oven, big enough to put a turkey in, and a small frying pan good for cooking an egg.  That was it.
Pots and Pans (sitting in a dumpster): $250

And who said camping was cheap?