Winter Camping

One of Katelyn's favorite birthday presents this year is...

Clorox wipes.  Seriously.  The girl loves cleaning!  And I have to limit her use of "wipies," or we'd be going through one of these a week.  So now she has her own (THREE of her own, thanks Noël!) and she can disinfect non-porous surfaces to her heart's content.

But that's not what this post is about.

Her other favorite birthday present is her new princess sleeping bag.  (Thanks Grandma and Goppy!)  And she was dying to use it.  Sleeping in it on top of her bed every single night was not enough - she wanted a real campout.  But seeing as the princess sleeping bag was only rated to 50 degrees, and our last winter camping experience (pre-Katelyn) ended in freezing fingers and toes, a stolen pillow, and scraping frozen dog vomit off my sleeping pad with an ice scraper (remember that Gabe and Melissa?), we decided to forgo camping outdoors in favor of moving some furniture to slumber in the great indoors.

 Setting up camp was so easy!

 

Even Copper wanted to come camping.

 

Wait - no, he just wanted the marshmallows.

 

 And we did roast lots of marshmallows.

 

 She likes 'em burned.

 

 Silly marshmallow face!

 

No Copper.  For the fifty-millionth time, you may not have any marshmallows!

 

 Ali didn't care about any kind of roasted sugar yumminess...

 

...as long as someone was petting her.

 

 We had lots of family fun!

 

 Relaxing by the campfire...

 

 ...being silly...

 

 ...catching Ali mid-yawn...

 

 ...snuggling...

 

...tickling cute toes...

 

 ...gazing at the moon...

(ok, ok, a flashlight beam)

 

 ...reading stories by flashlight...

 

...and finally falling asleep.

 

Ironically, while we humans slept on the floor, the canines slept on the couches.  Hey dogs, what kind of camping ninnies are you?

And when Katelyn did finally fall asleep, Kenny and I watched several episodes of Top Gear on TV.  What?  You don't watch TV when you're camping?  Well you would if you had a TV, an Xbox, and a subscription to Netflix right next to your campfire.  Trust me.

It was some pretty primitive camping, but fun all the same!