Nice Night with my Son and a Fire.
This happened about a month ago:
After getting dinner ready, I did a fire with C in our little metal fire pit near the gazebo. He had been bugging me for several nights in a row to do a fire, but this was the first night I had the time and energy to do it right.
We made an event of it. I started chopping up a couple of branches that fell off the volunteer tree we've named the kids' tree. The branches were reasonably well dried out (other than being rained on a couple of days before), since they fell off about a month prior. The girls took over the chopping for a while, so I took the chance to pick up horse poop in preparation for garbage day. Then I took over the chopping, since the girls were done and wanted to go back in the house. Several times, C and I had to add little dry branches and blow on the fire to start the flames again. It was so dark out it was like flipping a light switch going from coals to flames.
The whole process took over three hours. For the last hour or so C cuddled up in my lap while we burned up the last of the wood.
It was sweet and pleasant and a good time spent with my son - one I wanted to write about to help me remember some day. The thing is, I always liked making fires when we went camping when I was a kid (it's nice to have a large enough yard to have fires most anytime we want to). Some of my earliest memories are of when I was about 6 and my Dad showed me how to build a good fire. I hope C thinks back someday with fondness on when we made fires together.
After getting dinner ready, I did a fire with C in our little metal fire pit near the gazebo. He had been bugging me for several nights in a row to do a fire, but this was the first night I had the time and energy to do it right.
We made an event of it. I started chopping up a couple of branches that fell off the volunteer tree we've named the kids' tree. The branches were reasonably well dried out (other than being rained on a couple of days before), since they fell off about a month prior. The girls took over the chopping for a while, so I took the chance to pick up horse poop in preparation for garbage day. Then I took over the chopping, since the girls were done and wanted to go back in the house. Several times, C and I had to add little dry branches and blow on the fire to start the flames again. It was so dark out it was like flipping a light switch going from coals to flames.
The whole process took over three hours. For the last hour or so C cuddled up in my lap while we burned up the last of the wood.
It was sweet and pleasant and a good time spent with my son - one I wanted to write about to help me remember some day. The thing is, I always liked making fires when we went camping when I was a kid (it's nice to have a large enough yard to have fires most anytime we want to). Some of my earliest memories are of when I was about 6 and my Dad showed me how to build a good fire. I hope C thinks back someday with fondness on when we made fires together.