Backyard Campout

At the beginning of the summer, we sat down with our kids and made a list of everything we wanted to do together this summer.  One that my kids keep asking me about is camping.  More specifically, camping in our backyard.  They absolutely love doing this!!  We just haven’t had a weekend to do it, so we decided to move it to the middle of the week.  It ended up being super windy, and Jason ended up working late, so it was up to me to get the party started.  Savannah helped me put up the tent.  Jared was so excited, even though he can’t remember camping, it was kind of like his little boy self just KNEW it was going to be awesome!  He ran around the yard yelling “YEAH!” at everything we did!

Next up, start a fire in the crazy wind.  It blew out a TON, but I finally got a roaring fire! 

We all chose our roasting stick and roasted our hot dogs!  I love that Savannah and Michaela are old enough to do it by themselves.  They really loved it.  Lily and Jared needed help, but both were determined to try it themselves first!

Eating our yummy dinner!

So after dinner, we moved on to the most logical thing to come next at a campout---Dessert!  We had many many desserts.

We started with coconut marshmallows.

We had regular marshmallows. (some of which got burned)

Then we had s’mores!!  mmmmm, my favorite!

And then my *other* favorite:

The girls (all 3) got really good at roasting everything, and they were really cute about helping me roast stuff for Jared too.  Once we were all sugar-filled, we watched the fire, and then the lightning storm that was just to the south of us.  It was far enough away, and moving farther that we were ok, and it was a pretty awesome sight! 

FINALLY, Daddy got home and was able to enjoy his own campfire meal!

Then, as I got everything all set up in the tent, Jason sat around the campfire with our kids and told stories!! 

They loved talking to him and it was so cute for me to watch!!  I LOVE this little family of mine!

The plan was for me and the kids to all sleep outside and Jason inside, since he had work in the morning, but Jared was too riled up to lay down, and when I asked him if he wanted to sleep inside with Daddy, he said “yup!”.  So it ended up being just me and the girls outside.  It was really late, and they were really good about going to sleep.  The crazy wind kept trying to blow our tent down all night, and I had to go out and stake it down better in the middle of the night, but all in all it was a GREAT backyard campout and I’m glad we could do it with our kids!!