Finally, Fire #2!

    Although we were slow to make the beginning of summer fun, we are going gang busters now.  Grace's schedule did not co-operate, nor did the weather at the beginning of the summer.  We had the hottest, driest summer that I can ever remember.  We had a fire ban because we had one small rainfall for the whole month of July.  Fire ban meant no outdoor fires, a summer staple for us.

    Finally mother nature co-operated and brought us rain, glorious rain.  Last night for only the second time this summer, we had a fire.  The smell of the wood burning was heavenly.  It's funny but for me that is the smell of summer.  I love having a time lapse and then wearing a sweater that I have warn to a fire, and that amazing smoke smell that has woven itself into your sweater.  To me this is like an olfactory memory book.  The smell takes you back to that relaxing time, sharing giggles with the kids.

    Last night we may have had some of our best laughs ever.  It is part of our backyard fire tradition to go around the fire and ask each other questions.  Usually the questions are recycled i.e. no one thinks of a new one and we spend the time answering the same questions that we have just answered last week-end.  Last night saw for the most part a fresh batch of questions, most of them were crazy, but they were new questions.  The favourite question of the night, and by far the funniest answers came from Rowan.  He asked "If you had to hang out with one cartoon cereal mascot who would you hang out with?  Your choices are ...

Snap, Krackle, and Pop; Toucan Sam, or Tony the Tiger.  We laughed so hard at everyone's responses that I was expecting a call from one of our neighbours telling us to quiet down!  My response to this question...

I would not like to spend time with Snap, Krackle and Pop because they seem hyperactive, and I hate that.  Toucan Sam seems like he might be a bossy know it all, and everyone knows that I am a bossy know it all, and we would clash.  That leaves Tony the Tiger, and I would ask him to follow me around, point at me and say "Sheeeeeee's GREAT!"  I think it would really help my self esteem.  After my answer, and we moved onto to other peoples questions and answers, every so often Rowan would belt out "Sheeeeeee's GREAT!", and point to me.  This would throw us all back into hysterical laughter, which only caused to make him do it more often (I'm pretty sure Rowan is going to wind up being a stand up comedian when he grows up).

No we were not camping, we just still have not
taken down the tent from the back yard camp out.

    The other really fun aspect of our fire last night were glow sticks.  My friend came for a visit last night and she brought everyone glow sticks.  The kids had a blast.  There were tons of lightsaber inspired battles.  Many of those battles involved the biggest kid... Christopher.  

    We had a really fun night, and all it cost was a bag of wood.  There were no ipods, no televisions, no phone calls, nothing to distract us from just being together.  We didn't need anything except for each other.  Don't get me wrong, the whole illusion quickly dissolved when we came through the doors.  We were then assaulted with requests for snacks, and could they watch t.v. in their beds?  For that two hour period that we  sat around the backyard fire, no one else in the world existed.  We were surrounded by a chorus of frogs and crickets, only broken by the snapping sound of the logs, oh and lots and lots of giggles.