it's been on my bucket list each summer to have a backyard camp out. a few years ago, we had one with ethan and griffin and tim sleeping in the tent with michael and harper. crosby was an infant, so she and heather and i slept inside. that was 3 years ago, and it seems to just have slipped down to the bottom of our summer list each year since. but not this year. i put it on our calendar a whole month before the date, and we kept talking it up to the girls and planning it out.
hot dogs over the fire pit. pasta salad. chips. lemonade. s'mores roasting on sticks we found in the trees.
we stretched blankets out next to the fire, catching up on some chapters of the boxcar children. i remember summer days of my childhood, sitting on a small folded aluminum webbed lawn chair in my front yard, reading the exact same book for hours. the girls and i read until it was too dark to see the pages, and then hurried inside to change into our jammies.
while michael finished setting up the tent, we had fun with some sparklers.
around 9:30, we cozied up in our tent. michael and crosby slept in sleeping bags on a thin air mattress on the floor and harper and i slept under blankets on a blow up mattress. it was hot, so we left the vents open, exposing the open sky and stars. but around 11:30, i woke up to rain drops on my face. i woke michael up to zip us in, and we slept the rest of the night listening to the rain pitter-patter over our heads.
we all woke up early the next morning to the sound of heavier rain, so we headed inside and chatted up our night. i don't love camping, but i did love this. it's going to be on the top of our summer bucket list next year.
