Backyard Camp Out

With Alex out of school for Christmas Break, we have been staying busy and enjoying our time together. We love having her home and I know we will all be sad (Carson included) when she returns to kindergarten come January. YaYa (Alex's grandma) has been taking advantage of her Alex time too! She has been over several times this week and has already had one slumber party with us. While she was here, she announced to the family that she wanted to host a camp out in our backyard. What YaYa wants, YaYa gets - therefore, we had a camp out. We got amazingly lucky - the weather was gorgeous and actually even a bit warm. We were also blessed to get the coolest tent ever from Uncle Stuart. The tent sleeps eight and has a doggy door - seriously!

When Daddy came home from work we told Alex we had a big surprise for her. Daddy was wonderful and went outside and took care of the tent assembly (not a minor feat). Meanwhile, Mom and I had to keep Alex occupied. When the tent was ready, we all took her outside and covered her eyes. When she saw the tent, she squealed with excitement and said, "Oh my goodness! It's a for real camp out in my very own yard. This is the best day ever." And we aren't sure what all was said after that, because she went into freak-out-girl-mode and was yelling so loudly and so quickly that we were cracking up. I do remember her telling us how excited she was to tell really scary ghosts stories, make s'mores, read books, and have the puppies join the slumber party....so she clearly had an agenda in her mind. One of my favorite qualities about my mom is that she is a dreamer...and she makes things happen. So, she made sure Alex had everything she wanted on the agenda. They had a ball! They packed up all kinds of flashlights, snacks, toys and and set up camp. The girls also created quite a puppy resort for the three Yorkies. Emmy, Macy and Baylee loved the tent. It was really more like a house. We brought Carson outside to check things out and little did we know, this was an ingenious idea. He was CONTAINED! Ha! He absolutely loved the tent. He ran around in circles and thought crashing into the pillows was the best game ever. We were laughing and having the best time. I had to stop and try to take it all in - we are in such a sweet spot with our kids. I love our family.

Many thanks to the great and wonderful YaYa for being cool enough to want to camp with a 5 year old, loud-mouth, hyper-diaper, at the end of December. You are crazy...crazy cool! Thanks for the awesome memory! We didn't do great about taking pictures, but I got two at least.

Alex and YaYa first thing in the morning. You can see the puppies in the background too.

Check out this tent -pretty amazing, I think.

Alex cried when we had to take it down. If she had it her way, we would all just live out there together in one little tent. Ahh, the mind of a five year old is so innocent and precious. And totally nuts!