a confession with a happy ending

Dating is sort of a farce, right?  No one lets their true blue bare selves hang out while the prospect still has a chance to bolt.  Us girls keep the 'crazy' at bay and you guys keep the immaturity and body function humor under wraps till the deal is did.  (the marriage deal that is)  Dave and I are no exception.  However, I maybe be guilty of portraying myself as something I really am not.  And this is an "outdoorsy girl".  

We all did things we're not proud of when we were in our twenties.  I can talk about it now because I'm in my 30s and have been for a whole 4 months.   When I was single and in college I soon figured out that outdoorsy girls caught the attention of certain boys.  I thought these boys were generally dreamy and so I started to play the part of the outdoorsy girl.  Since I was from Wyoming and most people think Wyoming is still the "wild west" circa 1898, they seemed to buy the story.  I did enough to get by and really started to believe myself to be an "outdoorsy" person.  All the while my parents were scratching their heads, going "Hmmmm..." 

Well Dave was no different.  He was wooed by my outdoorsy ways.  It wasn't till after we were married for probably about a year that Dave's dream (one that he thought had come true) of having backpacking, rock climbing, dirt loving, latrine digging, hiking, biking wife began to fall apart.  I actually have pretty significant anxiety about spending the night outside.  And backpacking - forget it.  Confession. We tried it once.  We hiked a mile in and camped.  I was a nervous wreck.  The next day we hiked out. 


Three words:  psychos, bears, bugs.  No thanks.

Okay, I can survive a few nights car camping so I'm not a total wuss, but with kids I am a total wuss.  Add "little to no sleep" to the list above and I'm out.  So we haven't done much camping (much to Dave's disappointment) since we had kids.  However, this last weekend we were going to do it. We had it all planned out and I was actually a little excited.  But then Ruby got sick.  She got Herpangina (hand foot and mouth) from the lovely germ fest at church and was miserable all weekend.  And so camping trip was cancelled. 

 Bummer.

Lucky for my kids Dave is a really cool Dad.  He decided to set the tent up in the back yard Saturday night and go camping with Sol.  Following his lead I decided we'd have a camp fire in the ole fire pit and roast hot dogs and mallows.  Family camping in the back yard!  Woohoo!

The kids loved it!!!
 

(P.S. That's our old dead Christmas tree)

Ruby hasn't yet developed a fear of fire so that made things interesting but we made it through the camp fire dinner with no injury's!  Sol loved roasting hot dogs and mallows.  He likes everything cold so his food was ready about the time he stuck it in the fire.  Lucky!
 
Ruby was just happy, which was a nice change from the sicky grumpy pants she'd been the last few days.

After the fire we sat in the tent and told stories.  When ever I said the word "stories" ruby would take this stance that kind of looked like she was getting ready to do a Spanish dance.  One fist in the air, the other hand flat  out it front of her like she wanted a five.  We figured out she was getting ready to sing and do the motions for "Book of Mormon Stories."  Its a fave.  So we sang it a few times.
 
Sol happily snuggled down into his sleeping bag and went to sleep after stories.  Ruby not so happily went to bed in her bed.  And I happily slept in my bed.  Yes, this was my kind of camping.  Fire, hot dogs, mallows, stories, tent time, MY bed.


Sol has been asking to go camping every night since.  He must not take after me.  :)

(I love this picture... I love seeing my boys have soo much fun together and I love how Ruby's just watching like "silly boys.")