Backyard Fun

We had a night out camping in our backyard last night. My parents gave us a tent when we were in the United States last year which we promptly left in the United States. We bought another one in the states but it fits the whole family. It's much too big to fit in our backyard. We don't know anyone in Brasil who has a big yard or, in most cases, a yard at all. Our back yard can be cut in about 3 minutes. So we needed to buy another smaller tent one for the times when the kids wanted to "camp out" at home. We found one at a grocery store here in Porto Alegre and bought it just for times like last night. The tent turned out pretty good except for the fact that it had no instructions, but we figured it out. Here's how it went last yesterday:

I had some really good help getting the tent set up.

Within 30 seconds of the tent going up I already had someone checking the place out to see if it was worthy of a camp out.

Within 5 minutes of the tent being set up we already had people staking their claims with sleeping bags and pillows.

At about 7:00 this little girl had her sleeping clothes on. You need to realize that this is someone who is NEVER ready to go to bed. Let's say she was a little excited about sleeping outside.

Before we were ready to invade the tent we had to have a cook out right? This was our fire starter (he's a bit of a pyro) and hot dog cooking helper.

We all enjoyed a good meal before we went outside. I should never of had that 2nd hot dog.

We took our laptop and a DVD out to the tent to watch a movie before we (Anderson, Garrett Carys and myself........for some reason Benay didn't want to sleep with us on the ground) turned in for the night. The DVD didn't work on the laptop so we weren't able to see a movie. I don't think the kids minded so much because within 2 minutes of lying down it looked like this:
After sleeping 4 in a 3 person tent for 4 hours (I had to take Anderson into the house at 1:00 because of constant squirming and grumpiness) I was able to lay down in a completely vertical position for the rest of the night. Suprisingly (for me at least) we woke up feeling really good after "roughing it" in the outdoors. Carys has already asked if we could do it again. TONIGHT!!