Friday, July 24, 2009

Family Night: Camping In

The little ladies have been talking quite a bit about camping lately and when David suggested a camping theme for Family Night - it was fun to run with it and come up with this fun evening!

We made a big tent in the living room out of a sheet and blanket over all our dining room chairs. We toasted hotdogs over a fire which the girls helped collect the wood for!

Dinner was yummy and then we toasted marshmallows and made s'mores! We sang songs and told stories as in around the campfire. Then, we moved the tent into the ladies room and let them camp out over night!

It was such a fun evening!

PS: Check out my friend, Megan's, great indoor camping night as well!

13 comments:

Wendi said...

Great idea to use cookies to complete the s'mores. I imagine that was a lot less mess then candy bars.

Leanne said...

My boys will love this idea!!

Mom said...

Great camping idea! :) We are going camping "out" tonight for the first time in awhile -- we'll think of all of you :) Love, Mom

melissa said...

Monica - I have a question for you. At what children's age(s) did you begin doing family night?

Marie said...

Oh, what memories you made. The camping sounds like so much fun.

Blissful & Domestic said...

my kids just saw this and now have requested we do this for our family night. Where did you do the fire? I saw on your friends page they used a candle. Does that really work? You don't have like scented marshmallows after do you?

Ruth said...

What a great family night. We did this outdoors one time and had a lot of fun until an unexpected rain shower brought us indoors.
Ruth

Monica Wilkinson said...

Melissa,

I had to look back in my blog archives to answer your question, because I couldn't remember!

I think we've been doing it since Emily was about a year old or so, though we did not do anything planned. It was just a night that we agreed not to schedule anything else.

When Rachel was about coming up on a year, we started more of the intentional activities as a family and Samuel has never known anything different.

That said, there have been seasons where we don't do anything or don't plan anything special. We are just together.

I really prefer the times we have something planned that is fun to do together and have made an intentional effort to be more faithful at planning these times.

Monica

melissa said...

thanks, Monica. I think that as a family, it's good to have these times planned. I really like the idea of a special evening set aside as a family.

With now having a little guy just over a year, and another little guy coming in the fall, I'd love to start something intentional with our family. It may have to wait until the initial adjustment of TWO settles down, though! :)

Megan said...

Would you believe we still have that tent set up in the attic? But it's been too hot to use it. It will be fun again in September.

Your own indoor camping experience looked like a lot of fun. Next time we're through we'll make sure to do it on a Friday so we can participate! :)

Megan said...

Oh, and for the question about the candle smores - YES! It really works! We usually do it with a butter knife, but I got the little skewers that night to make it feel more like "camping". And no, the marshmallows don't absorb the scent of the candle. And all the candles I use are scented ones that I've made myself.

We've been making smores this way for, um, 4 years now. Because we're all high class like that and everything. *grin*

Me said...

You're amazing, Monica. What a great mommy you are!

blessedmommie said...

How fun! I LOVE that last picture of your girls. It so captures their sisterhood. Precious.