The Kids Went Camping....

....in the backyard.

The father and sons campout is coming up this weekend, so Marcus set up the tent to test it out.  The kids had such fun playing in it they asked if they could sleep in it that night.

*Time out*  I have a hard time finding that balance between keeping my children safe and letting them go to experience life (and its possible hurts) on their own.  It seems all around me, parents are one extreme or the other.  Either they hover incessantly over their children, or they don't care at all what they do.  But on this journey of motherhood, I don't know when the right time is to do things.  When do you let them walk to their friend's house by themselves?  When are they old enough to have a sleepover?  When is it ok to not watch them every second at the playground (or is it?  Creepy weirdos abound in this world.....)  I have a million questions like these, and since everyone has their own way of doing things, I guess I just have to figure it out as I go.  That's motherhood right there.

To me, six and four just seem SO YOUNG to be sleeping outside at night.  What if they needed something and I couldn't hear them?  What if they woke up early and started running around and waking up the neighbors with their noise (despite my stern warnings). What if someone came in the backyard while they were out there?    I wish I could say our neighborhood is perfectly safe, but the fact is, we've had several burglaries on our street, our neighbor kids are punks, and from time to time, police helicopters circle over the nearby subdivisions.

Marcus looked at me, probably reading the unspoken worry on my face, and said, "They'll be fine".  We got their sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows, and read them the riot act about how to behave.  Just to pacify our paranoia  we did put the garbage can by the gate to the backyard, just in case anyone got any ideas about coming in. At least we'd have some warning...

They got into bed, we zipped up the door, and off we went.  They didn't last long before they were asleep.

They did just fine, sleeping until Marcus woke them up to go to Kyle's Tball game.    I wish I could say I went to sleep and didn't even worry, but I did have dreams of them running around at dawn and waking up all the neighbors.  Thankfully, that was one dream that didn't come true.