Fire

I always remember how anxious adults were whenever I was around a fire as a kid. I never quite understood why until I had kids of my own to understand the often limited forethought they use. It is this understanding that has let me to not venture into the world of fire with them yet. I did however love fires growing up still do. We had a great fire at our family reunion last year on Orcas Island and the kids were absolutely mesmerized. Anyway, after some prompting from Carol and all the kids, I went out and bought a firepit. Why would you ever buy a firepit instead of making a pile of rocks? Well, one reason is that up here in Alaska all the rocks are covered with snow for 7 months. The other reason is that when the rocks are not covered, there is a large forest 20 ft away from our house and kindling a plenty for a friendly neighborhood forest fire. So we got a firepit.

I set it up with Beth while Carol was out on an errand with the other kids and from the minute it was set up all three of the kiddies were counting down the seconds to ignition. I did cheat and use one of those handy firestarters (works fantastically well) and rationalized it because the wood was still pretty wet. I did a pseudo tee-pee method and we were off and running in no time. Hot dogs (turkey dogs) and marshmallows were the feast of the day and we downed almost a whole package in about 15 minutes (of hot dogs, that is). There were no major accidents other than a grazing of Beth's neck by Isabel with a marshmallow roaster. I did have visions of disaster, but fortunately all permanent injury was avoided this time.

The kids did roast me a few marshmallows and they got them just right. I have always been an efficiency nut and learned early on in the world of marshmallow roasts that you can consume about 10 times the quantity of marshmallows if you set them ablaze instead of trying to get them golden brown on all sides. I know there are strong feelings about this either way, and if you hate the char taste, then you obviously can't go this route, but I kind of like it and it's certainly speedy. The kids didn't like the black mallows as much (mom helped them with the browning), but they loved making me the carbon treats and I inhaled them like always.

We didn't do songs or dancing or anything like that, but we really did have a great time. We're definitely going to do it again and hopefully we'll make it through the summer without starting each other or our foliage on fire. That would not be a fun blog post.

Conclusion: build a fire...it's fun.