Happy campers

Take two kids under age 5, two beagles, and two tired parents. Add one enormous tent. Result? Pure joy for all!

Last week Ken suggested to me that we have a backyard campout this past Saturday night, and I was all for it. When we were dating and then DINKS, we used to camp a couple times a year with friends of ours who were also DINKS. I recall with some degree of longing the late nights by the campfire, talking, drinking, laughing, freeing ourselves of all responsibility.

But except for Ken going on his annual canoe trip with cousins, neither of us has been camping since we started our family. Lots of things come to a screeching halt when you have little ones, but the good news is that eventually you get to share y our past favorite with a new generation.

So Saturday morning Ken mowed the lawn (usually my job, but I was sick) and by midafternoon he had a chance to pitch the ginormous tent that we affectionately call "the 3-room circus." We plopped an air mattress at either end, a sleeping bag next to one mattress, and a pack-and-play in the back. We ate burgers and dogs on the deck, and at dusk we lit the outdoor fireplace. We invited the neighbor kids over to roast marshmallows and make s'mores, and they all played with glo sticks and romped around the yard.

Henry was the first to crash in his new outdoor bedroom. We tucked him into his pack-and-play with his favorite two blankets and "snuggle guy," his stuffed rattle toy, and off to snoozeland he drifted. Could've cared less that he wasn't in his own bedroom.

I was next. I turn into a pumpkin much closer to 10:30pm than midnight, so I crawled into my sleeping bag atop one of the air mattresses pretty close to that time. Henry picked up his head to smile at me and then crashed back down after I said, "Night-night, Henry." I wasn't yet asleep, though, when Ken brought a newly sweatsuited Padraic in to tuck him into his sleeping bag. Padraic was psyched that we were camping, but he settled right in and fell asleep, with beagles Bailey and Tully close at hand.

We really thought that the dogs would be the most difficult ones to persuade to do the camping adventure, but they are dogs. They wanted to be where their people were. We just feared that they'd wake up in the middle of the night and howl their fool heads off because of a bunny hopping through the yard in search of a late-night snack, but although Tully woke up at one point and sniffed the air furiously, Ken was able to settle him back down before a peep was made. Whew.

Instead of awaking at 5:30am when the dawn peeked through the trees above, the boys (and even the dogs!) let us sleep until the heavenly late hour of 7:45. At which point we all crawled out of the cozy tent into the cool morning air and went in search of the bathroom and breakfast.

So now we have made it through the trial run, happy and surprisingly well rested. While we might not actually take the dogs to a campground and certainly aren't taking them to Wisconsin when we visit SIL, BIL, and our nephew in a few weeks, we will definitely be taking the boys on camping adventures, both in our backyard and beyond.