Average Jane Goes Camping

A couple of weeks ago, my sister's Facebook status was "is getting burned up by her 4-year-old about when he can have a sleep over!"

It occurred to me that my nephew, Ian, had never stayed over at our house, despite the fact that his sister was a sleepover veteran by the time she was his age. Thus, I volunteered to have him spend a night over this weekend. To make the whole thing even more exciting, I decided that we'd set up my tent in the back yard and sleep there.

I put the tent in the back of the yard near the fenceline. It didn't occur to me until my husband pointed it out that I'd put it pretty much exactly where we saw bobcats in our yard a couple of years ago. Heh.

My sister dropped him off yesterday a little after 5 p.m. as I was finishing all of the prep for our picnic supper of grilled hot dogs, yellow watermelon, corn on the cob and potato chips. He was very excited and kept declaring that it was going to be the "bestest sleepover ever!"

After dinner we made s'mores. It's harder to toast a marshmallow over a charcoal grill than you might think.

Notice that my niece, Shay, made a point of marking her presence before she went home. According to my sister, she was rather jealous that her brother got a solo sleepover.

Ian enjoyed his first s'more. Well, about half of it anyway.

We had some time to kill between dinner and bedtime, so we took our sleeping bags out to the tent and checked it out.

After that, we went inside and bugged my husband for a while (drums are fun!) and then watched a few episodes of SpongeBob Squarepants. Around 8:30, Ian declared that it was dark outside and thus it must be bedtime. I'm certainly not one for staying up late, but 8:30 is considerably earlier than I usually like to turn in. Nevertheless, Ian was insistent.

We borrowed a flashlight from my husband and made our way to the tent. After two trips back into the house for water and Ian's stuffed puppy, we were ready to settle down for the night.

Well, I was ready to settle down for the night. Ian was more interested in playing with the flashlight and discussing the trains that we could hear in the distance. Eventually I zipped him into his new Lightning McQueen sleeping bag for the umpteenth time and we both fell asleep.

My sleep was pretty typical of all of my camping experiences. I had a sleeping bag and a sleeping mat, but the mat doesn't cushion the ground as well as I'd like. I kept waking up with one arm asleep or my lower back hurting.

On one of my wakeup occasions, Ian happened to be awake, too, and he was in a chatty mood. I checked the time on my cell phone and it was a little after 3:30 a.m., so I was hoping against hope that he would settle back down. After another discussion about the train, we both fell back asleep until 7:30.

After confirming that it truly had been the best sleepover ever, we went inside to say goodnight to my husband. We then made a quick grocery store run for breakfast supplies and I made us bacon and waffles. We watched a couple more episodes of Spongebob, then Ian said he was ready to go home. Since I had run out of ways to entertain him, that worked out pretty well. We packed his suitcase (forgetting only his OU hat), and I ran him back home.

In other news, yesterday's audition went well, so I'll be working with a new band starting next weekend. This one seems like it'll come together pretty quickly with a set list that's similar to the kinds of things my last working band used to play, so I'll keep everyone posted on gigs.

That's all I have for now. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!