Sleeping outside. Cooking outside. Eating outside. Doing everything else....outside.
The cooking, eating and sleeping I could handle. It was the everything else that posed a problem. So I proposed a compromise and made it sound like the MOST! FUN! IDEA! EVER!
We would camp in our backyard. We could pitch a tent, build a fire, and sleep out under the stars all the while having a heated, indoor bathroom only 25 feet away. And she went for it!
So this past Saturday night The Wood Family Camping Trip was underway. We traveled all the way across our deck to the rugged terrain of our backyard. There Handiman and The Ocho worked side by side to pitch our tent (which we borrowed from the Ellis family). Upon completion we stocked it with all the necessary supplies: Sleeping bags, pillows, blankets, flashlights, a teddy bear & Kit Kittredge.
Once camp was set, Handiman built a fire where we cooked our hot dogs and enjoyed some hearty chili.
Once it was good and dark we each took turns telling ghost stories. I told the tale of the lady with the yellow ribbon, Handiman broke out the classic "Where's My Golden Arm?" (and made The Ocho scream and jump to high heaven at it's conclusion) and The Ocho rambled off some story about Spongebob Squarepants and eating eyeballs. It wasn't very scary but it was rather disturbing.
After the stories were done we played an awesome game of Hide & Seek. We would each take a turn being "It" while the other 2 hid all around our house under the cover of darkness. (I would now like to apologize to the woman jogging down the sidewalk as I was perched behind one of our fence columns and to the neighbors driving down the street as I laid in the grass behind our berm.) I was certain somebody was going to call 911 an report suspicious behavior, especially when Handiman decided to hide in our next door neighbor's tree. He freaked The Ocho & me completely out when he started rustling the branches as we passed by. It was all kinds of awesome.
Next, we made the most delicious S'mores ever around the fire and retired to our tent to play a board game until it was bedtime. That's when our camping experience took a turn for the worse.
There we were, Handiman, The Ocho, Kit Kittredge, Checkers the Teddy Bear and Me, all crammed into a little tent sleeping on the cold, hard ground. And did I mention it was about 47 degrees outside? It only took Handiman about 10 seconds to fall asleep (How does he do that? I'm convinced he only needs a pillow and an opportunity and he's dead to the world no matter what the circumstances.) That meant it took only about 15 seconds for the Snoring Heard Round The World to begin.
I tossed and turned and tossed and turned and eventually dosed off. At around 3:00 am Handiman woke up, unzipped the tent letting all the cold air blast in and announced he had to go to the bathroom. I decided I should seize the opportunity and suggested that maybe we should all go inside and pile into our soft, warm bed. While Handiman thought it was an excellent suggestion, The Ocho did not.
"We can't give up now!" I begged to differ but relented to stay. So, Handiman returned and we all did our best to go back to sleep.
At 6:00 am The Ocho excitedly exclaimed "We made it!" as though we had just endured the greatest hardships known to man and survived. While that certainly wasn't the case, we were glad we did it.
We spent time together, made memories we'll never forget and realized something very important about our family; We are not campers. To learn that lesson we didn't need to look any further than our own backyard.
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