Rockin' the Suburbs

Last night we officially atoned for the last several weeks' worth of tag-team parenting and Nickelodeon marathons by staging a good old-fashioned backyard camping trip, complete with sleeping bags, flashlights and s'mores. Pete somehow located the rubbermaid storage bin with the dusty old camping supplies and made the happy discovery that the 4-man tent we bought on the cheap back in 1996 still works.

I think the last time we slept in the tent was twelve years ago, in an old growth forest in northern California or southern Oregon, en route to Kodiak. I remember there were these banana-like tree slugs and crusty, craggy tree stumps big enough to hide in. It felt like an enchanted forest, filled with ancient, secret magic. At least until about 3am when some kind of mystical forest creature started scuffling around outside our tent. Pete said it was a deer but it sounded more like one of those half-man, half-goat things. We all know they eat banana slugs.

So last night, there she sat in her blue-and-gray nylon splendor on the recently shorn lawn, a few feet from the deck. Since the backyard is fully fenced in, and Bella slept on the deck all night to keep watch, we felt pretty confident that we could protect the girls from any errant man-goats or ill-tempered unicorns. But there was a moment of tension when we realized that we forgot to turn the sprinklers off.

By the way, I did some quick camping math & have concluded that a 4-man tent purchased 12 years ago for $14 is really not big enough for 4 people, not even when 2 of them are under 8.