Backyard camping. It’s one of those activities that sounds really simple but always ends up being more of a pain than expected. The kids have been begging to “go camping” ever since last fall. Besides being the wrong season, Dear Wife keeps things planned out months in advanced and I have to do most of the camping set up by myself so it’s hard to find that sweet-spot of time where we have an open weekend and I’m mentally strong enough to follow through on everything. Given the proximity of the backyard, we decided to set up here again, and while it wasn’t exactly the relaxing weekend I had hoped it might be, it ended up being one of those experiences that left us all with lasting memories.
Earlier in the week, the kids and I had trimmed down the overgrown lawn and cleaned up some brush that had fallen in a storm a few weeks back (long live the decorative cherry tree the previous owner had planted in the middle of the shady front yard). Even days ahead of setting anything up, the kids were already talking nonstop about our upcoming camping night. On Friday, I gathered up all the essentials—tent, sleeping bags, s’mores fixings, hot dogs—and prepared myself for a bit of controlled chaos.
As an aside, wife isn’t much for camping so she was planning to relax and enjoy our queen bed all to herself, however she had started fighting with an infection on a scrape from a week before. She had been to the doctor and gotten settled with antibiotics and (we thought) fixed up, but it was not to be. This is important context to explain how our camping day goes next…
Saturday morning rolled around, and I got woken up to my son saying, “Mom needs you down stairs.” When I get downstairs, my wife was in a serious (and obvious) amount of pain and her first words to me were something like, ‘it’s worse and I need to go to the ER’. It’s hard to say exactly because, ever since the COVID thing, when my brain connects “hospital” and “wife”, I just go into “fight mode” and my memory doesn’t work very well.
So we all got around very quickly and took wife to the ER. She insisted we NOT go in with her so kids and I got her dropped off and then we went to the cafeteria and ate a nice breakfast while we waited for news (I’m partial to hospital cafeteria food having worked at the Hillsdale Hospital all those years ago). The ER got her in very quickly, gave her the best pain meds she’s probably ever had (she said it was better than the stuff they gave her when she had our daughter), but then she had to wait for them to test the infection.
While we waited, kids and I ended up going home so I could take my own meds (if I skip too many, I get the shakes and panic attacks… HURRAY!) and we got busy setting up our little campsite. The kids were understandably worried about mom, but still bouncing around with excitement. In retrospect, it was probably better that we had something to do to manage everyone’s anxiety. We cleaned up some larger limbs that had fallen and got ourselves a nice stack of firewood ready to go. By the time we got the tents half-way pitched, wife was done. So we took a break, went back to the hospital, and brought everyone back home with some cheese burgers and chicken nuggets for lunch.
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[3]At this point, I’m trying to realistically lower my expectations for what “camping” would look like, but by late afternoon, wife was feeling much better (and had new antibiotics), so we were able to get the campsite finished and a campfire going. The kids had already settled into their tents with their tablets (camping is fancy when your techguy dad has WiFi extenders to cover the back yard! XD) but after the fire was going the kids wasted no time grabbing marshmallows and roasting them over the flames, while I got busy grilling hot dogs and brats (followed up by coal-fired foil packs of potatoes fresh from the garden).
[4]The kids had their small tent set up with their “Happy Napper” sleeping bags, plus like half the stuffies and blankets they owned crammed inside. The tent itself was a little one we picked up from the Aldi “Aisle of Shame”—a solid $30 impulse buy in May that I was excited to try. The temperature was dropping into the 50s, so I reminded them continuously, “even though it’s hot now, keep those extra blankets nearby”.
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[6]As for me, I had my own tent set up with space for my CPAP machine. I still don’t have a great portable power solution, but an orange extension cord running from the garage seemed to work just fine. It’s too close to ‘glamping’ for my taste, but it’ll do for now, especially since many state parks have at least a single outlet on camping spaces.
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[8]Once night fell, we all settled in. The kids were thrilled to be out there, even though it was just our backyard. I had trouble sleeping while the trains (and later, Fast & The Furious wannabes doing street racing down our block). Both kids slept through that, but woke up at different times from the cold. They went inside, used the bathroom and got warmed up, and then came back out and covered themselves with the extra blankets to get back to sleep. Nothing major, just the usual stuff that comes with camping out in cooler weather.
Despite the interruptions, they both felt proud to have made it through the night. We only do this once a year (or less), but it seems to be one of the highlights of their summer. I can’t wait until they’re a bit more helpful with setting everything up (right now, it’s a lot of work all on me) but seeing how much they enjoy it makes it all worth it.
Although none of the camp outs have been easy, between the ER visit, the midnight wake-ups, and trying to wrangle the kids into helping me, this was probably one of the harder “camping trips”, but at the end of the day, we pulled it off. The kids had a blast, my wife was feeling better, and we made some great memories together. It was a huge #DadWin. Just goes to show you don’t need huge fancy vacations to make memories with the kids. These backyard #staycations create unforgettable moments with the family that rival anything money could buy.