Monday, August 17, 2009

Campfire 2009

Campfire 2009 was absolutely the best ever! The girls and I had a great time planning the guest list, the food, crafts, and the decorations. Friday morning dawned beautiful with sunshine and moderate humidity as we started setting up the yard and house for all of our guests.

I was up at 5AM to assemble my Campfire Cake:
Then we started working on making all the salads: two types of macaroni salad, potato salad, cole slaw, and fruit salad. By 1PM we were ready to put up the decorations. Sam had moved all of the outdoor furniture and the grills into position, so all the girls and I had to do was hang stars, planets, etc around the yard. Abby and Nathalie helped Sam put up the volleyball net.
At 5PM our first guests began to arrive. Sam threw on the burgers and hot dogs and soon everyone was digging in and enjoying good conversation. My favorite moments of our campfire are when the sun has started to go down, the fire is glowing, and I can just listen. The buzz of happy conversations going on, with the sounds of the kids playing in the background is like music to me.
Just before it got dark everyone who was camping over set up their tents in the corner of the yard. No one wanted to be adventurous and camp out in the woods...

As it got darker, we set up our chairs to be able to watch for meteors as we sipped out iced tea and ate s'mores. By 10PM we had already seen quite a few including what appeared (from our perspective) to be a near miss between a "spy" satellite and a large, bright meteor! Everyone settled into their tents/beds around 11PM. We heard the kids up around 4AM in the backyard watching for more meteors. I think that was my second favorite moment: listening to the kids exclaiming as they saw a shooting star, Nathalie teaching them about the stars and showing them the different constellations. Kids are fun to listen to when they don't know you are listening.

Breakfast was served at 8AM and those that couldn't come the night before, stopped by to join us. We had eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes with our own Maple syrup, fruit salad, juice and coffee. Small scale, by normal Smith Family breakfast standards!

After breakfast we did a quick clean-up/pack-up and headed to Canterbury to my mom's house for swimming and more eating!

On our way back to Lebanon, I looked in my rear view mirror and saw that everyone had fallen asleep! I take that to be a sign that the 6th annual Campfire Under the Stars was a success!!

1 comment:

Peter said...

Thanks SO much for the treat - you guys are tops! The cookout was a delight, and Samara enjoyed the whole thing thoroughly. Since we old folks left barely past the beginning, it was nice to see all the pix you took with your new camera. Again - thanks!!

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