Backyard Camping and Choices.

I have a love/hate relationship with camping. I love almost everything but I HATE sleeping in a tent. It just isn't my thing. I prefer to sleep in a comfortable bed without the sounds of nature waking me up at an awful hour of the morning. So imagine my surprise when I heard my own mouth say the words, "Maybe we should camp out in the back yard this week." That's right...it was my idea. My husband had the week off of work and it just seemed like the right thing. We checked the weather and made some plans. Everyone wrote down some ideas of things they would like to do during the week. I pictured idyllic family time and magic.

Then, my friends, LIFE happened. First, the weather. The week started off rainy. Sleeping in a tent is bad enough, but having to do it in the rain is a deal-breaker for me. We postponed the start of our camping. We opted for other ways to spend time as a family. A movie night! Oh, the arguments over what we should watch. Eventually, we settled on Captain America and strong-armed the dissenters into going along with the promise that their choices of movies would happen another time. We ate popcorn and candy and despite a rocky start to the evening, enjoyed our movie together. Two of our older boys have jobs, so work schedules made it so time all together as a family was not as effortless as we had planned. Plus I had plans to sew some masks for the family (for future generations that might stumble across this...the year is 2020, man and we are in the middle of a pandemic). 

Tuesday didn't come together much because of general chaos, shopping, work, projects, etc. We did cross off something from our list and T and I made dinner together. After dinner, we watched the second Captain America movie. 

Wednesday morning I woke up with acute pain. Familiar pain. A trip to the urgent care and I was deemed to be suffering the effects of a kidney stone. Not fun. That afternoon I felt a little bit better but not great. We watched Avenger's Age of Ultron for our movie that night. 

Thursday morning was excruciating. Our plans to go waterfall hunting in the area were set aside. I was not in any condition to go. However, by that afternoon I was in less pain so we proceeded to set up camp in the back yard. We watched Captain America Civil War and headed for bed in our tents late that night. Frog song is one of my favorite sounds of summer where I live, but it is very hard to go to sleep when they are singing loudly all around. Eventually, I made it to sleep and managed to stay in the tent most of the night. 

Around 7 a.m. Friday morning, I went into the house and took a nap in my more comfortable bed.
Dalan made breakfast burritos outside and we enjoyed them for lunch. That night we invited a friend for dinner and had tinfoil (aka boy scout) dinners and made apple crisp in the dutch oven. We also toasted some marshmallows. We had planned to watch another movie, but after working all day, our son S was tired and wanted some downtime. The younger kids watched a movie upstairs while the older kids played video games and D and I had a date night watching a couple of episodes of a favorite show. After that, we all tramped through the yard and settled into our tents for the night. 

Saturday was the 4th of July. We made waffles and pancakes for breakfast and enjoyed eating them outside. One of the beautiful and terrible things about back yard camping is the close proximity of the house. It was great to have everything we needed close at hand, but that also meant that screens were calling and our kids just can't seem to resist. There was a constant battle to get them to come back outside. We roasted hot dogs over the fire, had s' mores, and lit a few sparklers. The neighbors shot off some fireworks that we were able to watch and we had our traditional glow stick and disco light show to celebrate the holiday. As we were sitting by the fire, my son K who just graduated from high school said, "You know how we have those videos of just...life, from when we were younger? I would like to make more of those so we can remember what we're all like right now. Because life is pretty amazing right now...which is kind of weird because we're in the middle of a pandemic." That got me to thinking about perspective. Our week did not turn out the way we had planned. Weather, kidney stone, work schedules, screen time, attitudes, and exhaustion all combined to make it a less than ideal week. But despite that, I keep thinking about how nice it was to just sit around the fire and spend time together. And everyone slept outside all three nights. I was sure someone would balk and choose to sleep in the house, but everyone participated. It wasn't the ideal we were hoping for, but it was a pretty fantastic week.

I keep going back to K's talk of how amazing life is right now. 2020 has been a hard year. Sometimes it feels like everything is on fire and there is no escape. But when I stop, slow down, and think about life...I realize just how amazing it really is. I have so much to be grateful for. Friends, family, blessings. Even on the days where I don't want to get up in the morning because the world feels like such an awful place, I can find so much good when I choose to look for it.

I can't fix the world right now. It is too much for any one person to fix. But I can choose to be kind. I can choose to love people with my whole heart. I can choose to look for things to be grateful for and to move past the disappointments. I get to choose how I react. You get to choose. We all have choices. I am going to choose to keep looking for the light, the love, the hope. What are you going to choose?