Epic Fail

Every 4th of July I get a little sad because I see all the families load up and head out to spend their weekend camping. I only remember one time we ever camped as a family growing up and I absolutely loved it. An excuse to not shower, get filthy & stay up late. Every summer when my basketball team had a tournament somewhere to save money we'd camp instead of staying in a hotel.

So me and my nostalgic self thought it would be an awesome idea to have a trial camping run in the backyard with the kids before venturing out to the real camp world. Here's our campsite! Complete with fire pit, grahams, chocolate, and mallows...
Tony built a fire in our pit and Spencer was so stinkin' excited not only for the smores but for sleeping in Uncle Na-Na's cool tent.


Tony dismembered our butterfly bush to make pokers to roast the mallows on. I wasn't too torn up about it seeing as those things are now noxious weeds & out of control!
For the first time ever I had the patience to sit and make the perfectly toasted mallow. I usually just shove it in the fire and then blow it out and eat it... Kind of like Spencer did.
The kids were loving it. Tate ate her first mallow and kept walking around the table trying to find the rest of the ones that I had hid from her.
It was a beautiful evening. UNTIL... it was bedtime. It was already a good hour past regular bedtime when we put the kids down in the tent.

I had taken our memory foam mattress off of our bed and it pretty much filled up the entire "6 man tent." Don't really know how they get that abstract number seeing as it JUST fit 2 adults and 2 small kids.

Spencer did great. He crawled right into his brand new sleeping bag ready to go to sleep. Tatum was too excited and just kept crawling around the tent. And as she crawled around she got more and more tired and would not just lay her head down and sleep. So she ended up crawling and crying and Spencer kept yelling at her to be quiet causing her to cry even more.

So then I was like, it's cool, I'll just go lay down with them and get her to sleep. NOT. She just kept crawling around. Tony joined us and she still didn't settle down. At one point she crawled on top of my head and I went to get up and move here and she literally rolled down my back 3 times. Tony could not stop laughing.

Finally around 11 when I finally realized that we had failed I took Tate inside to her crib. Within a minute she was sound asleep. Such a stinker. Tony came in to sleep inside and I stayed outside with Spencer. He too fell asleep in a matter of minutes as I laid there wide awake until about midnight when I realized there was no way I would be able to sleep out here with all of the random noises (I just might be THE lightest sleeper ever).

So I swapped with Tony who was trying to sleep on our naked bed with some crappy fleece blanket he pulled out of a drawer somewhere. I slept in Spencer's bed.

Happy 4th of July!