Happy Campers

I wasn't intending to buy a tent for my living room. Really, I wasn't. But my visiting 5-year-old niece and 8-year-old nephew had been waiting all week to have a sleepover at my house, and when I told them we were going to camp out in my living room the next evening, my niece's face lit up. "In a tent?" she beamed. "No, just on the floor," I said. And then, of course, the biggest sucker for a cute kid ever, I scooted over to Target and bought one that night.

It said "two-person tent" on the label and I just assumed that it would be one of those tiny, 3-foot-high tents, nice and snug, just perfect for a couple of kiddies. (Yes, I know, the actual dimensions were probably on the label, too, but I have never been accused of being overly observant when it comes to things that require assembly.) So when I started putting it together, the flexible poles stretched across the living room floor and through the dining room, and after wrestling with nylon and metal and elastic, I eventually had a room-within-a-room, fit for... well, fit for about five or six kids.

Bottom line? They LOVED it. They watched a movie from the tent, they ate their dinner in the tent, they slept and fought and giggled and made shadows on the tent walls with a flashlight. Oh, and they forbade me to enter it the entire time they were my guests.

They've gone home to California now. Guess who watched a movie and ate dinner in the tent last night?

© 2011 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie