Smoke in my eyes

We invited our home team and my daughter's home team from church to have a bonfire at our house last Sunday evening. Ron worked to get two utility carts to hook up to his riding mower so he could give little kids a ride around the pond while Jenn and I made fresh apple pies and potato salad to add to the feast.

Friday night our youth from church had rented a big bungee-run blow up thing for their lock-in. Our pastor that oversees all chilren's and youth ministries, brought it in on Sunday morning to play games with the kids between services. Then someone thought, since we already had it payed for we could bring it to the bonfire too. So that's how we got this super big blow up toy for everyone to play in/on. Mostly the older youth and the adults could put on the vests and see how far they could run before being slammed back to the starting point. I know about that "slammed back" part as I was one who went flying back by the seat of my pants. The children mostly jumped on it and climbed all over it and a good time was had by all.

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I found some children raking leaves (hmmm...we live on three acres here with lots of trees) up to the slide on the swing set. Then they were taking turns sliding into the leaves. This way they only had to rake a small pile and use it over and over. Clever children. Wouldn't you know, this summer my husband and daughter built this great swingset/fort and spent a small fortune for it, and look at what the kiddos liked the most...yes, that's a home made tire swing.


The train ride around the pond was a lot of fun too. When Ron would come back with a load of kids you could hear them chant "one more time, one more time". I asked a friend why she thought the kids were having so much fun in a cart that only went 5 mph, and she said it wasn't a video game! It was something out of their daily routine.



I'm already working on a plan for next year to be able to roast the hot dogs without melting my eyebrows. The fire was so hot that even with Ron's 5 ft. long hot dog poles it was hard to stay close to the fire long enough to get those dogs warm on the inside without being burned on the outside. Though it was hot, it just gave us something to talk about...like the smoke getting in our eyes no matter where we stood.

We have been having people over for bonfires for years and I do believe we have never had weather as nice as we did for this one. There was just enough chill in the air when the sun went down to put on a jacket, and some kids even put their shoes back on!