We had some friends over Saturday night for a cookout. We had hotdogs & hamburgers & corn on the cob & frozen margaritas and the kids ran around the yard at dusk chasing fireflies & playing flashlight tag (and occasionally going inside & playing Wii, which the adults let happen because we were talking & drinking beer & a little bit of silence was nice).
Then we assembled these things
and
(ignore that black & tan)
and we did this
and made these
I haven’t had smores in ages. My dislike of camping means I miss out on campfires & toasting marshmallows & tequila shots around the fire after the kids go to sleep…
Naturally there was one of these in yard
or on the deck as the case may be.
The kids were having a sleepover combined with backyard camping. We tried to do this a couple of weeks ago at our friends house but it was rained out & the kids slept in the basement. This time the boys & their friends were able to spend the night out in the yard in the tent.
The adults slept inside.
We sent them to bed in the tent & went inside to watch tv about 10pm. Naturally they snuck out of the tent with their headlamps & explored the yard for a bit. You can see the tent from the sofa with the living room curtains cracked & it was easy to spot the headlamps But the kids don’t know that. They think they were all sneaky & put on over on us and that is half the fun of backyard camping.
They must have come in the house 15 times between midnight & 1:30am, each one with a different reason every time but eventually they all went back in the tent & fell asleep.
And were up at 6:10am.
I like the backyard camping kind of sleepover.
No one in the house to keep me awake.
They are out in the yard having a safe but oooohh its in the dark, scary adventure.
I get to make smores
Everyone wins.
This is going to be more of a feature next summer I think, now that we know they can stay out there ‘unsupervised’ as it were.
***disclaimer, we did not have tequila shots Saturday night. But they do have them when camping because they can’t make frozen margaritas out in the woods.
