Campfire Cuisine

Tonight was a really cool night.  My 3-1/2 year old Mia and I had a chance to spend the night together at the house.  My father-in-law had the two older girls over for the night, and Cathy was at work, so Mia was stuck with her old dad!  I will preface this by saying that I had a pretty rotten day - I rear ended someone in my car today.  No injuries, but not exactly good news, especially for my vehicle!  I don't exactly have a stellar record when it come to bumping into stuff, so I am a little worried that the insurance company is going to drop me, or at the least bump my rates even higher than they already are.  Ughh.  Ok enough of that crap.  On the way home from work I got the thought in my head that it would be a great night to have a quick campfire out in the yard.  This time of year is my favorite for outdoor fires, and Mia really digs them!  I had to stop at the store anyway, so I grabbed a package of hot dogs and some hot dog buns and raced home to get the fire lit.  I ran the idea by Mia and she was totally into it!

I split a bunch of wood a couple of weeks ago, so the fire was pretty much ready to light.  Mia and I hunted around for some small kindling out in the woods and got the fire roaring in no time.  We took the hot dogs, a couple of paper plates, a lighter, some mustard, and a bag of marshmallows down to the fire pit.  All you have to do is stick the hotdog on a stick, put it over the flames for a couple of minutes, and you have a truly delicious meat head delicacy!  Mia had one, I had four!  They were great.  We then switched to marshmallows, which Mia is surprisingly good at for a 3 year old.  She only torches them about 80% of the time.  My other kids were at about a 99.5% burn rate at Mia's age.  We followed up the marshamallows by sitting and watching the flames and the stars for a half hour or so.  We ended the night with a 1/2 hour of Dirty Jobs on TV and reading two kids books.  All in all it was one of the most enjoyable evenings I have ever had together with Mia.  It really is amazing how much more you can connect with them when you're one on one, and not with the whole crew.  It was a good reminder for me that I need to prioritize these father daughter dates with all of my girls.  They are something I have always done, but when we get busy it sometimes slips by us just how important those little windows of time are to our kids.  They just think it is so cool to be alone with dad for a while, especially when you do "Dad" type of stuff with them.  I highly recommend this kind of campfire cuisine.  Go out, grab a package of hot dogs, some buns, and enjoy!

Love,


Wacky Dad