"Camping"

At some point several months ago we went over to a friend's house to watch him burn some wood. He made a big fire and we sat around it and ate hot dogs and chips and smores and drank lemonade.

And now Julia asks several times a week to go "camping."

I am not a camper. Actually, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over a fire in the backyard is about the extent of my camping. In my version of camping, you have immediate access to air conditioning and running water and electricity. Oh, and you sleep in a real bed.

Fortunately, sticking food on a stick and holding it over fire is all that's needed to satisfy Julia's need to camp.

Unfortunately, I don't have a fire pit in my backyard nor do I have an abundance of firewood. Okay, I have no firewood at all.

So I improvised ...



In case you can't tell (and feel free to click on the image to see it larger), those are my two very dirty children sitting on the very dirty floor of my very dirty kitchen "cooking" hot dogs on skewers over a 9x9 baking pan filled with lit tea lights. And eating the hot dogs right off the sticks.

Ahhhh ... camping.

(I did actually boil the hot dogs before sticking them on the skewers so they were actually "cooked." This had the added benefit that after waving the hot dogs over the tea lights a few times, Julia felt hers and said, "Oh, Dax, mine's hot! I guess they're cooked!")