Campfire with My Boys

When you think about your childhood summers what comes to mind?

Maybe spending a few days at the beach, traveling to other places, hanging out with your friends, all the summer cookouts, attending your local carnival or circus, possibly staying in your hometown and going to the lake or pool.

When I think about my childhood summers it typically consisted of having to finish 2-3 pages of math or English workbooks. Yup, that’s right, my {now looking back} smart Momma made us do school work over the summer. And then after lunch we would spend the rest of the day at our local swim club.

However, two weeks out of each summer we would take a vacation! My parents saved up all their vacation time in order to take our family on a trip each year. You might be thinking why two weeks? Or why two weeks at a time? Short answer is because we would ALWAYS drive! We were campers!

Each summer my parents would alternate our destination with either a trip up the east coast to Acadia National Park in Maine or a road trip out west to Yellowstone, Bryce & Zion Canyon, Grand Canyon, or Mesa Verde… just to name a few!

While on vacation we would participate in so many activities – hiking, canoeing, water parks, mini golf, white water rafting, rodeos, horseback rides, did I mention hiking? We always did A LOT of hiking. And on most evenings we would settle down in our hammocks and have dinner by the campfire and make s’mores for dessert.

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When you’re in the mountains or up in the Northern New England area, it tends to cool down each night where having an evening campfire is a must rather than a second thought. Not quite the same for our Baltimore nights!

Even though Kade is young I still want to create special moments for him and have him experience new places. This summer we already took him to the carnival and the other night we had our own version of a staycation.

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We used the teepee I made last year for Kade’s six month family photos and a plush campfire kit to have a nice evening together. Originally I bought the plush campfire kit to do this setup inside on a rainy weekend {for a while there we were having tons of rain} but the rain had held off so we took to the outdoors!

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Kade had so much fun popping in and out of his teepee, attempting to “cook” his food, and then trying to feed us and himself the faux hot dog and marshmallow.

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If you are looking for some fun summer ideas to do with your kiddos or something that is cost effective, pitch a tent in your backyard and have a staycation camp out or sleep under the stars in your sleeping bags… hopefully it gets cool enough for you to have a campfire and more s’mores!