Well, we did it again–the backyard campout thing! Tom had the house all to himself and poor guy couldn’t sleep!
We had a ton of fun and this old tent of mine (which brings back fond memories of my trips to Burning Man–it still has a light coat of Playa dust!) was so easy to pitch: 2 poles and Dylan and I were done!
It’s a lot of work to camp even in the backyard, but the kids liked it so much, they wanted to camp again…and we probably will do it again one more time this summer (I hope!)! And, we finally just bit the bullet and hosted an impromptu-ish BBQ and s’mores roasting with a few friends. Hanging out in the backyard is always fun, but made much better with good company!
Tom did ALL of the food prep…he made our pesto pasta, corn, and prepped bruschetta…and then he lit the fire for the s’mores!
As it turns out, Jenny’s hubby Rick used to be a bartender, too, so he mixed up some seriously good cocktails for the grown-ups!
Cameron was so excited, she got dressed in her pajamas immediately after the tent was set up! Then she had to change–several times–because her jammies kept getting wet from the water table or just plain old grubby from just playing around!
We knew we were going to get points for Capture California, so we had to prep our flag. Dylan had the idea to sew it on and he worked on that for a while, but in the end, I just pinned our logo on there with some safety pins. We applaud his efforts and interest in the Crafty stuff, though!
And, here’s our little firecracker just looking on!! She’s really forming words now: “thank you”, “berry”, “baby”,”yessss”…I’m sure there are many more that I’m forgetting! Suffice to say, she’s doing her best to keep up with the big kids!
Here’s Jenny helping little Julie out with her skewer.
And here are Shane and Claire!
Jenny and I have been running together for about a year now and Jenny, Claire and I do a weekly playdate with the 3-year old set! I hope having Shane and Kaden over on Cameron’s turf helped her bond a bit more with them. Although she and Kaden went through a hand-holding phase, she still mostly plays away from them rather than with them. This past weekend, though, it seemed like all of the kids together played really well–such sweet kids!
Here’s Marlon, Julie, Dylan and Cameron (with Shane in the background) getting their yummies ready!
tent set-up at dusk
Originally uploaded by coffywoman.
After everyone had left, we were left with our tent and our flashlights.
Tom read a bit of Harry Potter in the tent (Cameron didn’t even make it through one page!) and then we did our lights out. Looking forward to doing it again!
