Indoor Campout

Fridays are an exciting day in our house. It's the one day a week I let the kids watch more than 30 minutes of television at one sitting (without giving them a lecture about how TV isn't good for our brains). It's FRIDAY NIGHT MOVIE NIGHT. Usually, we make homemade pizza and the kids take turns choosing our movie (one week Ava chooses, the next Jax, etc.). But last night was a little different. Ava had mentioned a while back that she wanted to go camping. This is not the best time of year to go camping in our humid little state, so I opted for an indoor campout.

We started the night with hot dogs, beans and corn on the cob and the kids even got to eat ON THE FLOOR (gasp!). Because movie night is our tradition, I couldn't talk the kids out of skipping it this one week saying we wouldn't have a TV if we were really in the wilderness, but they weren't buying it. Fortunately for them, the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie just happened to be on (they're really into Alvin and the Chipmunks right now after Andy and I showed them some of the cartoons from our childhood). As the kids watched the chipmunks perform, I prepared a campout necessity: SMORES. Uncle Dusty once told us smores made with Reeses Peanut Butter Cups put the plain ol' chocolate ones to shame, which doesn't mean much to me since I'm not a big smore fan, but given that generally speaking, I think the union of peanut butter and chocolate could very well be one of the greatest of all time, I thought I'd give it a try. I assembled the sandwiches and nuked those babies for about 15 seconds and TA-DAA -- Smores! I should confess right now that I'm pretty sure my kids have never had smores. Jax wasn't quite sure what to do with them until he laid eyes on the marshmallow, then he knew exactly what to do. Ava, on the other hand, went right to town even asking for another when she was done.

We ended the night with some stories, silly time and finally a family campout in the living room. And by campout, I mean Ava and Jax slept on the hide-a-bed, Andy on an inflatable mattress and me on the floor. It didn't matter, the kids thought it was the coolest thing. So cool, as a matter of fact, that the little loons didn't go to sleep until after 11. They both have already asked if we can campout again tonight. I think they just want more smores.