Thanksgiving 2021, plus 14 Ways to Survive a Hotel with Bored Children

We celebrated Thanksgiving weekend with family in Virginia. When we talked about the things we are most thankful for, relationships with God and family kept recurring, reminding me how richly blessed I am to have an amazing God and so many stellar people in my life. 

Our Thanksgiving weekend included a traditional turkey (shared with an Indian)...

Bird Song has one talented seamstress for 
a grandma.

...and a not-as-traditional Thanksgiving turkey (not shared with an Indian). 

On Saturday, we visited Sea Quest and hand-fed animals like wallabies and iguanas and parakeets. If your children ever want something to do in Lynchburg, look up Sea Quest, a hands-on zoo aquarium. 

We made new friends and visited old ones. 

On the way home from our happy weekend, our van began having internal issues and showed its discomfort by puffing clouds of steam from under the hood. Following the advice of my mechanic-dad, we abandoned the idea of limping home and checked into a hotel at 10:30 pm. In the morning and three garages later, John found a merciful mechanic who squeezed us into his hectic after-the-holiday-Monday. 

Meanwhile, I stayed at the hotel with three children, no paper, and no games except those of my own making. My better boredom buster ideas are posted below in case you ever find yourself in a similar situation. 

1. Eat Breakfast. And take your time about it because when people are eating, they are not dying of boredom, thirst, or starvation, three conditions which can happen simultaneously and on short notice, depending on your age. 

2. Play 'Hide the Dog'. We didn't have a thimble but had an almost-thimble-sized dog. Hide the Dog worked well for seven rounds until the Child Wearing Shoes accidentally stomped on the sore toe of the Child Not Wearing Shoes. A wild holler of pain scared the fun out of the game entirely and had me cringing lest we be reported to the front desk.

3. Watch "The Most Dangerous Ways to School." We followed the journey of four young children in the Himalayas as they walked 100 km on a partially frozen, partially rushing river to get to a boarding school. Incredible. Afterwards, I told my children that if we lived in the Himalayas, they would have to content themselves being sheepherders and farmers because I cannot imagine sending them on a week-long journey that risks their lives.

4. Play word games like, "How many words can you think of pertaining to traveling?" And, "How many words can you think of that rhyme with car?"

5. Move children and luggage to the lobby at check out time. Offers a diversion, even though all of your antics are now public. If I had thought about it before we checked out of our room, I would have left the luggage behind and rode the elevator to the top floor for a good view of the town. 

6. Have your youngest imitate how different animals walk. And walk with his hands on his head. Hands on his knees. Walk backwards. With his eyes shut, but don't...eeks...hit that...lamp! Game over.

7. Do a scavenger hunt. Give them a list of ten things to take pictures of. This was my list, written on the back of a paper in my purse.

 

8. See how much luggage one person can carry (not pull) across the lobby. 

9. Skip a tile when you walk across the foyer. Now two tiles. Now three. And now four. Five? Not happening. 

10. Span the carpet. 

11. Sing Christmas carols. 

12. Nix wrestling. Nix playing on or with the luggage carts. (Trying to avoid eviction.) Nix the older sending the younger alone in the elevator to the sixth floor. 

13. Talk to people who come through the lobby, including the curious who want to know if you are Amish. "Ma'am," she said, "I just want to tell you that your babies are beautiful. The way you dress is so beautiful. Don't you change." My babies missed all she said except that embarrassing word--babies. 

14. Send a group pic to the aunt who asks, "You on the road yet?"

(What an hour and a half of being in a lobby can do to you.)

Somehow, we left the hotel in good humor, a testimony to the truly extraordinary children I have been given.  

There is Always Something to Be Thankful For

If I were to describe Thanksgiving 2016 in a couple of words, I would choose therapeutic and life-giving. At the time, our little family lived on the edge of Accra, Ghana’s esteemed capital. Ten fruit trees and a rectangle of grass grew on our property, but otherwise, the rest of our premises was man-made: a cement house, large gray brick courtyard, and a high wall that outlined the perimeter of our property and obstructed our view of the neighborhood. When I left our courtyard, it often meant going deeper into the city where there were, of course, more cement buildings. Tall ones. Unfinished ones with rebar poking crookedly from second stories. Buildings with crumbling concrete or brilliant paint. The streets were clogged with the chaos and commotion of too many cars and too little parking.

On Thanksgiving weekend, we traveled four hours to celebrate the holiday with other Americans. Our hosts’ home had a spacious backyard that ran in grassy exuberance up to the Atlantic’s rocky shore. The expansive ocean was wonderfully therapeutic to my city-sore eyes. The salty breeze that blew inland brought a welcome change from the stale air stirred by our lazy ceiling fans.

On that Sunday morning, a group of us gathered beneath a red-and-blue-striped canopy. I listened to the message, truly. But at first my attention was glued to that majestic ocean. I could see miles of surging water between me and the horizon. Hand-crafted fishing boats that carried men to prime fishing spots bobbed on undulating waves. A mast from a sunken ship poked tenaciously above the water, then disappeared beneath higher crests, adding mystery and intrigue to the scene. Nearer to me, waves crashed against the rocky shore and exploded into liquid fireworks.

All I saw thrilled me. I tried internalizing the view, knowing I would want to drink from its beauty many times after we returned to our cement-clad home.

But the scenery wasn’t the only thing I would carry away.

The speaker that morning was a stranger to me, a visitor named Leonard Meador. He and his wife were traveling with an aid organization and happened to be in the area for Thanksgiving. In his message, Leonard told us that he received a cancer diagnosis and a grim prognosis several years earlier. At the moment, Leonard’s life was no longer threatened by rogue cells, thanks to successful treatments, but he spoke candidly with no noticeable self-pity of those difficult days.

“When I awoke each morning, I chose thankfulness because I knew that regardless of my circumstances, there is always, always something to be thankful for.”

Thankful? When his world and maybe his very life was crumbling? I forgot the waves and the ocean. These were not empty platitudes spoken from pharisaic lips. They were words coming from a man who had chosen daily gratitude in the face of death.

Leonard continued. “I knew I always had something to thank God for because of these absolutes:

1. God is still on the throne. 
2. Jesus is preparing a place for those who love Him. 
3. Our God, unlike the gods of other religions, loves us and wants a relationship with His children.
4. Jesus saves us from our sins." 

I pocketed the crux of Leonard’s message and carried it with me to Accra, through the end of our term in Ghana, and eventually back to America. Especially during Thanksgiving season, I remember this message and consider the absolutes within it again. Regardless of my disappointments and unfulfilled dreams, regardless of failure, regardless of kidnappings and political unrest and pandemic complications that can unsettle me, there is always, always something to thank God for.

90 Minutes on the Appalachian Trail

I wish you could meet my mother. On first sight, she looks like any Mennonite housewife who bakes killer cinnamon rolls, keeps her house spit-shined and spider-free, and quilts by the mile. But it doesn't take long until you find a fun, unorthodox woman lurking behind the stereotype. 

She's the one who asked a cashier if his green hair was natural, and didn't bother explaining that she already knew it wasn't. The poor cashier probably still thinks Mennonites believe green hair happens to the babies of kale-eating mothers.

Mom also was the leader in our family's legendary Follow the Leader game. I'll preserve the remaining shreds of the participants' dignity by not disclosing names and details--except to say that somewhere beneath the neighbors' trees, my sister had enough and ran for home. But the grandchildren loved it and still laugh over the fun of the memory. Not, I say, a boring grandmother. 

I haven't heard that hiking the Appalachian Trail reached the bucket list of Mom's peers, but it was on hers. She wasn't interested in doing the whole thing, but dearly wanted to hike at least a section of the trail. "It has to have rocks," she told us emphatically. "I want to clamber over rocks." 

Fortunately for her dream, three of her daughters live in Pennsylvania near a rocky section of the AT. It wouldn't be difficult to give her the experience she desired. So, late in September when she came to visit us, we went on a mother-daughter hike.

The trail was all she hoped it would be with rocks to pick your way across and good views to stop and enjoy. 

Standing on the trail itself. Rocks? Got 'em.

We spent part of the hike finding the perfect rock she could add to the collection she has gathered from significant destinations. She has a rock from an Alaskan glacier, for example, which my son has had his eye on. And now she has a rock from the Appalachian Trail which looks exactly like the shape of Pennsylvania if you squint one eye, close the other, and hide part of the rock in your skirt. But it is small enough to fit in one hand, unlike the boulders that were suggested to her along the way, and it comes from the right trail. 

We didn't meet any through-hikers but we did meet a seedy character who added interest to our experience and speculation to the rehashing of the hike on our way home. Why was he concealed by the rock when we came around the corner and met him for the second time? And why did he act so surprised when he realized there were four of us? "Oh," he had said, straightening, and abandoning the fumble in his backpack. "There are more of you than I thought."

Back home in Indiana, Mom told her family doctor that she hiked on the Appalachian Trail. Most doctors like knowing their patients are staying fit and healthy while fulfilling dreams, and this doctor was appropriately impressed.

"How many days did you hike?" 

I wish I could have watched this conversation. I know the look Mom gets when she is trying to keep her face straight, the way her eyebrows raise. "Days? We hiked for 90..." She paused, she said, hoping he would be thinking miles. "...minutes." 

The good doctor threw back his head and laughed with pure enjoyment, then turned to his nurse. "She didn't hike the AT. She just looked at it." 

His long-standing relationship with my family allowed him to get away with laughing at Mom with no offense taken. But regardless of what he called the hike, Mom's feet walked the Appalachian Trail. 

I call it a dream fulfilled. 

My mom. One of the World's Best People. 

Native American Day

Last year we remembered Columbus Day with a corresponding art project. This year I decided to focus on Native Americans since my national day calendar lists both Native American Day and Columbus Day on October 11.

We started school by choosing Native American names for ourselves, then coming up with a system to fine anyone who used the wrong name. It is hard to teach old dogs new tricks, my friends. Abooksigun, in my experience, is infinitely harder to remember than Tyler. 

Bird Song, holding Singing Waters

John was at work when we chose new names, so the children kindly volunteered to help him out. Last suggestion I heard was Long John. 

Every time we forgot to call someone by their Indian name,
we had to pay the offended person in bead money.

I love our creative writing tablets because I can incorporate national days into the school day with little effort. This time, they copied Native American symbols into their tablets.

We used the same symbols when painting buffalo hides. To make the buffalo hides, we crumpled brown paper bags, smoothed them out, then painted symbols or pictures, using just a few colors. Detailed instructions are found on this website, where I sourced the idea.

Well, some of us painted symbols. One of us
just painted. 

Themed menus are a fun way to make any day feel celebratory, so I looked online for Native American recipes. Some of them were impossible to make since I didn't have a good source for bear grease or buffalo meat. Lacking those key ingredients, I knew our food would be inferior to the real deal. Despite its shady authenticity, our dinner menu suited our purposes nicely. 

Fry Bread

Fish

Succotash

Sweet Potatoes

Jerky

Nuts & Seeds

Nasaump, a cornmeal and berry porridge

It was a satisfying ending to a great day. 

Making DIY Ink

Ever since I heard that it is possible to make ink from natural substances, I wanted to try it with my children. Yesterday Tyler triumphantly brought me pokeberry ink that was nearly ready to be used. He had pounded the berries with his mortar and pestle (plastic cup and a stick). I strained the liquid and mixed in vinegar and salt to preserve the color. 

Today in the children's creative journals, I assigned the children to write a message using a quill and pokeberry ink. 

But if one color is good, more is better, right?

We looked for things in nature that stain your fingers. Walnuts. Leaves. Flowers. 

To get green ink, I collected a wad of green leaves and blended them with a little bit of water. Walnuts shells needed to be boiled for 15 minutes, as did the vinca petals. Once I had highly colored liquid, I added salt and vinegar to each color, which supposedly preserves the color. 

Boiling yellow mum petals failed to make yellow ink, but I remembered reading about turmeric being a good choice. I ran out of time and patience in waiting for the turmeric to fully dissolve in water, so we used it prematurely. If we were going to paint canvases to sell, I would have wanted to find a way to have my yellow less watery.

But the yellow paint worked fine for our purposes. We used the quill to do smaller spaces, words, or outlines and brushes for everything else.

Maybe someday I'll experiment with more kinds of berries, onion peels, dirt, chili powder, and purple cabbage. I'd also like to try mixing paint colors to see the new combinations we can come up with. But for now, my desire to make natural ink is fully satisfied. 

Curing Destination Disease

Ever travel with a person stricken by Destination Disease? If you have, you know what it is like. No unnecessary breaks. No avoidable waypoints. No relaxed meals. Just get in the car and drive with bug-eyed determination to your destination. 

Steve Gilliland, a motivational speaker, calls that hammer-down traveling style the Destination Disease. Unfortunately, John and I have been guilty of that, at least to some degree. Grandparents live a day's drive away which means we start driving in the morning and muscle through boredom and travel-weariness by watching mile markers slip by the windows. The sooner we get there, the sooner we can start having fun. This past weekend, though, we decided to take Gilliland's advice and enjoy the ride. 

We broke up an 11-hour drive by stopping at the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia. 

Each house, with exception to the West African replica, comes from the country it represents. The buildings were torn apart in their native homelands, their bricks numbered and marked for correct position and orientation, and the buildings were reassembled at the museum. For my LEGO-loving children, this sounded like the biggest LEGO challenge ever. Each house represented the kinds of homes the early American immigrants would have had (or desired to have) in their homeland. 

English house in the 1600's

One room of the English house

Irish farm from the 1700s

Many of the stops had friendly, informed volunteers who told us about the era and answered our questions.

A German man cooked era-appropriate food in the
German kitchen. He apologized for not being able to share 
the food with us. The best he could do, he said, was to let us smell his
breath after he finished eating, if we were interested. We weren't.

The tinsmith

One of the favorite stops for all of us was the African compound, probably because we could easily imagine we were back in Ghana. We recognized the woven fish trap (hanging beside the pole on the left side of the picture), the food, the gourds. They even had bamboo and banana plants growing nearby. 

But best of all was the family time. To humor our ride-loving threesome, we rented a golf cart instead of walking two miles around the premises. Walking would have made the most sense, considering we were breaking up a road trip, but the fun of a golf cart easily offset the missed exercise. We drove from one house to the next, happy to be together on a stunning September day.

Waiting in the shadows for the forge's volunteer
to return from his lunch break

Our success in breaking up the journey to South Carolina with the museum and a hotel for the night made us appreciate Steve Gilliland's advice to enjoy the ride.

With that insight freshly impressed upon us, John and I asked the children if they'd like to stop for the night to break up the 11-hour drive home. But anticipating a school holiday the next day, they opted to drive hammer-down with bug-eyed determination through travel weariness and boredom and get home yet that night. 

We humored them. I suppose this means none of us are completely cured of Destination Disease.  

But perhaps we are on the road to recovery. When we only had a few hours to go, our youngest said, "Mommy, I need to snuggle with you." The van needed fuel anyway, so we stopped and fueled up, then sat in the parking lot an extra ten minutes for no better reason than to let the youngest snuggle with his best mommy.

I call that enjoying the ride.

The License Plate Map

Starting point: Lancaster County, PA

Destination: Greenwood, SC 

Our maps app said it would take 9 hours and 52 minutes to drive that distance. But if you add in the inevitable road construction and the child who needs to visit rest stops with shocking regularity and occasional meals to stave off starvation, ten hours wasn't going to get us to the wedding in Greenwood. I knew we would need something to entertain the children along the way. 

We have Scribd, that wonderous library of audiobooks which we listened to by the hour. And we have an endless store of music that we listened to or sang with.

But my stroke of genius was taking along a blank map of the US so we could color in the State of each license plate we saw. John was already locking the house door when I decided to print one, so I begged his pardon and dashed back to the school room long enough to print a blank map. At first there were many spaces to color. But as the trip wore on, coloring in the spaces of much-needed states gave the same rush as fitting in the last pieces of a puzzle. For a long time, Kentucky and Vermont were the only two we needed to finish coloring the eastern half of the US. We dearly wanted them.

I suggested to John that he drive through a rest stop solely so we could read the license plates on the semis. He humored me, but just when we slowed on the ramp of the rest area, the child-with-the-mouse-like-bladder needed to go potty which meant we parked with the cars instead of driving through the corridor of trucks.

Even without a nest of truck plates to aid us, we saw a car from Kentucky in South Carolina and a Vermont tag in Pennsylvania after dark, less than two hours from home. The children were sleeping, so I colored in Vermont with deep satisfaction. 

Our map at the end of our trip

If you want to use this idea, I suggest you consider: 

1. a map for each child. We had one map and while it made the game a fun family event, it also created the question of who gets to color in the spaces. With only two children who wanted the pleasure, it was easily resolved, but larger families might run into larger issues with this.

2. a blank map instead of a labeled one. If I had thought of this fast enough, my children would have honed their map skills along the way. 

3. a map with Canadian provinces as well. After we saw a plate for the third province, I drew them onto the map and hoped no Canadian or cartographer would look at my sketches too closely.

4. coloring each state every time to you see it. This would make commonly seen states dark and infrequent ones much lighter. We considered coming up with a plan for this, but decided against it lest we wear holes in the page for the states we traveled through. But I still think it would add interest to the map of an older child. Color the state black after seeing it ten times, if you don't mind keeping score. 

All told, the map was great entertainment. Even for the mom.

Education and its Dilemma

Our homeschool is about to begin, and I thought it might be an appropriate time to share this article, one I wrote a few years ago.

     I wasn’t going to be a homeschooling mom. My own education took place in a private church school, surrounded by peers. Friendly competitions pushed my grades higher than they might have been if I hadn’t had to announce my score to twenty classmates. With happy memories behind me, I expected my future children to attend a brick-and-mortar school with classmates, chalkboards, and teachers.

     Not only did I have a positive experience to look back on, but a friend shared horror stories of integrating poorly-educated homeschooled children into her classroom. Fourth graders could hardly read. That clinched it. I would never be a homeschooling mom.

      But through the years, the “I will never” was slowly chipped away. I met another kind of homeschooled children. Some were annual winners of the local spelling bee and one child played piano like a master when he was eleven. I met a homeschooling mom who tailored classes to fit the needs of each child, churning out a dozen who knew more than I did. They weren’t social misfits; they spoke comfortably with adults and easily with peers.

    I rubbed shoulders with die-hard homeschooling moms who touted the benefits of teaching your children at home. To some, this was more than an optional schooling alternative; this was a God-given mandate. “God gave your children to you,” they said with their arms around their preschoolers. “It is your job to train your children. It doesn’t seem right to place them in someone else’s care for most of the day.”

     “Plus,” they told me, “when you homeschool, you can tailor the education to fit each child’s learning style, unlike a classroom where everyone is forced to go at a pre-determined pace. This is where homeschooling shines.”

    Other moms, pinning daisies in their hair, said, “I love the flexibility of homeschool.”

     That flexibility part made me wary. I heard of homeschoolers who mowed yard, pulled weeds, and raked leaves for a day of school under the umbrella of “studying agriculture.” I supposed that kind of flexibility produced fourth graders who couldn’t read.

     When my firstborn reached school age, we were in Ghana. I was going to become a homeschooling mom whether I liked the idea or not. Then came the next weighty problem: What curriculum should we use? Opinions rolled in.

    “Using self-paced programs is like tossing a pile of books in your child’s lap and saying, ‘Go educate yourself.’ But homeschooling is much more than that. It is being involved in every area of your child’s life, including their education. Plus, CLE is hopelessly boring.”

     “Abeka is advanced academically but it is very patriotic.”

     “ACE has a terrible writing program. The children are in, like, seventh grade and can’t give speeches or write essays. Plus, ACE is much too easy. All they do is fill in blanks.”

     “Rod and Staff is far too narrow-minded. They even put Adam in a plain-cut suit in the Garden of Eden in one of the illustrations.”

     “If you use any curriculum that doesn’t share your values, you will lose your children to the world.”

     “The whole book approach is the only way to go. You retain information through books you read, not by cramming for tests. Use a program where your children read living storybooks with guided discussions instead of textbooks with tests. These books give your children a whole world education, not one so focused on American history alone. Children need to learn about more than just Christopher Columbus, you know?”

     Using storybooks to educate my children appealed to me, but I sensed strong feelings behind the opposition: “Sonlight recommends ungodly books that condone or make light of sin, just because it is great literature. I would never allow my children to read those books.”

     Seasoned, build-your-child’s-educational-experience-people hinted that sticking with a single publisher for every subject was an inferior way to educate children. “Every curriculum has strengths and weaknesses, so your job is to ascertain your child’s learning style, then pick textbooks based on that. For my oldest son, I use Apologia for science, the Mystery of History for world history, and Saxon for math. But my second child used none of these.”

     And the final piece of advice: “If we are going to reclaim our children’s education, we don’t need to model our days after the public school system. One of the best things you can give your children is a love for learning, and you don’t get that by giving them a stack of textbooks. Learning is meant to be fun! We tried the textbook approach, but it did not work for us. I am not going to have war in my home for the next twelve years trying to force worksheets upon my crying child, so we switched to the whole book approach and it revolutionized our school days.”

     I wasn’t the only one who was unsure about educating my children with no tests and textbooks. "I'd be wary of the 'no worksheets' idea," my cousin wrote. "Sure, Thomas Edison may have learned that way, but Thomas Edison was the exception, not the rule. I'd like to tell those moms that unless they are confident their child will produce the world's next lightbulb, they are safest sitting little Johnny down and having him endure the drudgery of storing information the boring way. I'm all into interesting and hands-on, but there's something rotten at the bottom of this they-don't-even-know-they're-learning approach. I'd say, 'Exactly. And furthermore, does anyone else?'"

    By the time the barrage of opinions ended, we had already dipped cautious oars into the waters of homeschool. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. But judging by the Winds of Opinion, everything I had done so far was wrong, and my boat rocked dangerously. What did it matter if my kindergartener could read simple storybooks and write in cursive, or that my second grader could multiply and divide? I was guilty of being a textbook girl. Too structured. My curriculum was flawed. And my children, in spite of my most interesting diversions, were counting the days until summer break. I was failing, in other words. Maybe sending them to a real school was my only hope of redemption.

     My sense of failure might have shipwrecked our homeschool had voices of encouragement not penetrated my fog. One of them was my husband’s who listened to me process opinions endlessly and was still able to chart a straight course.

     “I’m not comfortable with the whole book, no-textbook approach,” he said. “Let’s use a traditional curriculum, worksheets included, to make sure the foundation is solid. Then, if you want to, add reading material to the side. Our children will get the best of both worlds.”

    “My children have been counting the days until school lets out, too,” one non-homeschooling mom told me. “It is normal at this time of year.”

     “This isn’t a perfect world,” someone else conceded. “School is what you make of it, brick and mortar or homeschool. Curricula are good or bad depending on the teacher. If it is working well for your family, don’t let the naysayers discourage you.”

     Encouraged, I filed my list of Sonlight book titles (mom-approved ones, of course) so I can add them to our library someday. I loosened up just a little until I can enjoy some of the flexibility homeschooling offers. No, I still don’t call a baking spree as a full day of Home Ec, even if they stir in the chocolate chips and press ‘start’ on the timer. But instead of copying a recommended paragraph into a textbook for his penmanship class, my second grader wrote a report on antlions he found on our property. When he read about a blind child, we wrote his name in Braille on cardstock and read a book about Louis Braille. That, in addition to his regular work. He didn’t even know he was learning.

     Indeed, school is what you make of it. For now, we are a homeschool family, making the most of an imperfect curriculum with an imperfect teacher at the helm.

The Diary of a Wimpy Camper

Each summer when I was a girl, our family went to a Canadian lake for a week. We stayed in crummy cabins, swam in a pool with no diving board, fished from glorified rowboats, and left for home with everything smelling like a cocktail of dead fish and sunscreen. The trip was the highlight of the summer for us children. And why wouldn’t it be? It was effortless to slip clothes and swimwear into a suitcase, pack a couple of books and art supplies for down times, and spend a week in the sunshine.

Family camping trips with cousins were similar. We explored the woods or played Monopoly in someone’s tent. Meanwhile, food showed up on my plate at mealtimes. Coolers stayed chilled and stocked with soft drinks without apparent supervision. (Did camp hosts take care of those things back then?)

Sadly, they don’t make summer vacations like they used to.

I recently spent two weeks poring over meal ideas, compiling packing lists, buying cartloads of supplies, and prepping food. The pile to take to Ohio grew like an invasive species and took over my kitchen. Out of necessity, we packed efficiently so everything could fit into our minivan. Propane cylinders rode in my kitchen tote. Bowls and pans fit together so tightly that I couldn’t retrieve one without getting them all. Smaller items slipped into crooks and crannies and fell into unreachable areas of the baggage.

We looked like roving packrats while driving to Ohio. Ice chests hung off the back of the van on a rack. Boxes and pillows piled up inside, leaving only pockets of space for the children to sit. They didn't mind. A week of camping with cousins was unbeatable. 

When we got to the campground and spilled outdoors (literally), I realized that aside from our tent, sleeping bags, and clothing, we had no place to go with anything. Tightly packed totes would need to stay that way. Even our ice chests had no place to go because there was no shade. There were no trees. At least no trees bigger than me. John and I pulled ice chests from a rapidly warming van and stood around whispering about how to get them out of the sun. Borrow shade from the neighbors? It was our only choice. We begged shade from my sister’s canopy for our ice chests and stowed marshmallows in my parents’ air-conditioned camper.

The lack of shade was only the start of our troubles. John and I were tenting, but since my siblings and parents brought campers, we reserved a full hookup site so we could camp beside them. That meant our site was designed for an RV, not a tent. The driveway was ample and cement. The grassy margin around its edge was sloped for drainage purposes. John assessed the options and initiated a difficult conversation.

“So where do you think we should set up our tent? On the cement pad or on the slope?”

Neither spot exactly thrilled me. It was like choosing your own punishment. I didn't want to be the one to make the call. “How about you decide, and I’ll just go along with whatever you want. Will the tent fit in the grass?”

“I think so. But it is sloped enough that we will fight a slide all week. What do you think about renting a tent site? A campground this big surely has actual tenting sites with trees and flat grassy spots big enough for a family-sized tent." 

"We could, but then we are going to be so far away from everyone else that we can’t put children to bed early and sit around the campground with the adults."

We opted for the gentle slope. As expected, sleeping bags shifted downhill in the night. Our brand new tent was equipped with a protective floor covering that was held in place with hooks and loops. A week of bodies sliding down the slope tore out one of those loops.  

We set up our tent on the only place it fit--six feet from the road and directly beside an ash pile. The ash pile was void of a campfire ring. Our site had no grill. No grate. Just a heap of leftover ashes heaped in a blackened circle beside our tent. The only thing that kept this from becoming a national emergency was that we pre-planned to save on firewood and share fires with my sister. Still, what campsite doesn’t have a campfire ring? 

Without trees, our tent sat in full sun. So did the picnic table. I looked at the tent, brilliant sunlight, and still-crowded van, and my spirits plummeted. This was going to be a long week.

On that first morning, I tried making mountain pies for breakfast. The recipe pictured perfectly toasted sandwiches filled with egg, sausage, and cheese. The instructions said to tear a hole into one piece of buttered bread, drop in a raw egg, top it with cheese, fried sausage, and your final piece of bread and toast it over the fire. It looked like a great idea online. But my enthusiasm for the recipe was low when we assembled the sandwiches. Egg squeezed out of the pie irons and ran onto the picnic table and below. A trail of egg whites followed us across that beautiful cement pad when we carried them to the fire, and a crust of burnt egg yolks adhered to the side of the pie irons during the cooking process. In the end, three of our five sandwiches cooked to passable levels of edibility.

The other two sandwiches stuck to the double pie iron with a vengeance. We prodded and pried and chiseled out as much of them as we could. John ate his portion “as is,” meaning partially cooked with the egg white still jittering when he walked. I opted to dump my scrambled mixture into another pie iron and cook it longer. It was a dismal feast at best.

While we messed around with stuck, raw, and scrambled egg sandwiches, our children ate theirs by the side of a vehicle, crowding together to fit in the shade. Breakfast was doing nothing to revive my love of family camping. At least I still had cinnamon rolls to bake over the fire. Cinnamon rolls and coffee would surely be enough to get even a smoky-eyed, wimpy camper excited.

I poked refrigerated cinnamon rolls onto roasting forks and held them over the coals. For the first few minutes, it looked like it would work, but then the dough started to slump and soften. It didn't take a culinary specialist to know that bad things were going to happen to good cinnamon rolls unless something changed soon. John saved the day by suggesting we bake them on open pie irons. To my surprise, they baked perfectly--even the one that needed to be retrieved from the ashes.

When I finished baking the cinnamon rolls, it was only 10:30, and I was already tired of being in the sun. I took my ash-covered roll to my parents’ camper and sat alone under their awning, hoping a breeze would not only cool me but improve my dark mood. Is this really what camping is like? Lousy food, hot sun, and smoke-burned eyes? I had forgotten.

Mom invited me into her air-conditioned camper, saying, “You look hot already!”

“I am hot,” I said. I had not absorbed enough breeze for it to do its good work. “I mean, seriously. Couldn’t they have left at least one tree on every campsite? Just one tree bigger than me."

That evening, a storm rolled in, defying the weathermen who had predicted a beautiful week with no rain. A purple patch on the radar approached rapidly while we grilled burgers over the fire—a fire that billowed smoke into my eyes no matter where I stood. As soon as the burgers were done, John and I inhaled our sandwiches and urged the children to hurry. Just as they crammed in their final tremendous mouthfuls, rain started to fall. I dove into the tent for refuge and listened to the rain fall in earnest. It picked up pace from there, changing from pouring rain to pounding hail. Hailstones pinged off our van and clattered on the concrete. They hit the tent with enough force that I wondered if any would suddenly come blasting through. Mercifully, they didn't, and the tent stayed dry.

I gave up on weathermen. Rainstorms passed through three days in a row, even though the forecast stayed beautiful. 

Rainy view of someone else's site

During the days, most of the adults in our group disappeared onto the lake with their kayaks and boats. I didn’t have toys like theirs, but I definitely didn't sit immobile at the campsite all week. I moved my lawn chair to the shore for a while and watched the children splash in the shallows until the glaring sun made me nauseous. I kept beating a path to the bathroom with my three-year-old who drinks like a water buffalo and has the bladder of a mouse. And I dodged flying bean bags whenever I carried food from the picnic table to the fire, because the cornhole game was set up on our otherwise empty cement drive. So I had my own variation of exercise and excitement.

I'm still wrapping my mind around this thing called camping. I spent two very happy years in a Ghanaian village where we lived without running water, electricity, stove or plumbing. Our whole village lived that way. It felt like there was redemptive value in living as much like our friends as possible. But now, choosing inconvenience and discomfort just for fun made me question the sanity of every American who camps. Who does this on purpose? Cooking over a fire with smoke stinging your eyes? Eating ash-covered cinnamon rolls, poorly cooked eggs, and unevenly roasted snacks? Trotting down the street to a germ-ridden bath house to take your child potty umpteen times a day? I'm still incredulous that we paid to do this.

To be fair, it wasn't all bad. I spent a week with four of my five siblings. That's a little hard to beat. 

I watched my children race around on their bikes with cousins, play on the playground, splash in the lake, and roast marshmallows in the fire. They played hard, ate heartily, and crashed into sleeping bags, exhausted. Even at my lowest moments, I knew I’d camp again for their sakes.

I enjoyed our evening campfires. Cooked shrimp, shared all around. Party mix by the bucketful. Singing by the light of the fire. We adults put the children to bed late and stayed up far later, laughing and talking like good families do around a fire.

Still, I can't say I was sorry to leave. Lingering smoke in my hair, shade-less sites, random rain showers, no way to organize my camping gear. My list of legitimate complaints was long.

But the biggest problem I had with camping was when I took a good look at myself and realized they sure don’t make happy campers like they used to.

Campfire Cooking

My entire family went camping for a week this past month. Until that experience, I always have camped with competent people who wanted to share (or assume) cooking responsibilities. But this time, considering the size of the group we were camping with, it made sense for each family to cook independently. This means for the first time in my life, I had to create a campfire menu.

Scared that my children would be the ones with boring campfire meals, I begged menus off of everyone else and sourced more ideas online. I was satisfied with the variety I came up with on paper, but cooking it was going to be another story. In the end, everything was edible but only because quality control teams don't bother scrutinizing campfire food. Some of it was burned and some was undercooked, but John says campfire food can be like that and nobody minds. (Well, somebody minds, but she will be silent about that for the time being. Keep an eye out for "The Diary of a Wimpy Camper," coming soon.)

In the meantime, here is a list of campfire food ideas, minus the traditional hamburgers and hotdogs that everyone already knows about. Nothing is original with me, so don't give me undue credit. And the final disclaimer is that half of this was cooked over someone else's fire. (Well, all of it was cooked on someone else's fire because our campsite didn't even have a campfire ring of its own. I know. Read the diary.)

1. Waffle Danishes
Make a sandwich out of two purchased waffles, cream cheese, and pie filling. Butter the waffles well and toast them in mountain pie irons until they are nicely browned. Serve with coffee.
Tip: Either make extras or be prepared to beat off the neighbors who have None. 

2. Cinnamon Rolls
The website showed golden cinnamon rolls being baked over the fire on roasting forks. I should have known better. Photoshop trickery going on there, maybe, because it certainly is not real life. I started off by poking refrigerated cinnamon rolls onto a roasting fork, but they soon softened and slumped dangerously. When he saw their demise was imminent, John suggested we put them on open mountain pie irons and finish baking them like that. They baked completely through. Even the one that landed in the ash tasted surprisingly delicious. But I feel my blood pressure rising as I type this. That breakfast isn't the greatest memory on record.

3. Steak, Eggs, & Potatoes

We were only cooking two meals a day, so I supposed a hearty breakfast was in order. We grilled small steak medallions over the fire, then fried cubed potatoes, onions, and peppers in our cast iron skillet. I cut the potatoes into really small cubes so they'd cook quickly. Once they were ready, I cracked a few eggs into the potatoes and scrambled them, making a delicious breakfast we all loved.  

4. Biscuits and Gravy

My brother baked refrigerated biscuits on a grate over the fire. They lost points for their campfire-cooking appearance, but supposedly the smoky flavor made up for it. The gravy was made in a Dutch oven, and the end result is worth repeating.

5. Hobo Packets

Wrap veggies, meat, and seasoning in layers of tinfoil and roast them over coals. The fun part about this meal is that each packet can be customized to suit personal preferences. Use cabbage, thinly sliced (or partially cooked) carrots, onions, shredded potatoes, green peppers, hamburgers, sausages, or anything else you might like to include. You can make them meatless and add a pat of butter to the vegetables. Wrap them tightly in tinfoil and roast over hot coals until they are done, flipping every 10 minutes. Plan on 30-40 minutes of cooking time. Delish!

6. Mountain Pies in multiple varieties
Quesadillas: My sister likes to use tortillas instead of bread in her mountain pie irons, giving plenty of space for the fillings like ham and cheese, mushrooms and onions and cheese. Think 'Ham and Cheese Quesadillas' cooked over the fire and served with salsa.

Breakfast Disasters: I tried tearing a hole in a piece of bread, cracking in an egg, and topping it with cheese and fried sausage. A couple of them were fully edible, which we gave to the children. John ate his egg partially raw. I dug my sandwich out of our new mountain pie maker with a chisel and digging iron. Call it a success if you like raw eggs or scrambled mountain pies. In the future, I'll use cooked eggs in our breakfast mountain pies.

Pizza themed mountain pies worked better for us because all of the ingredients were fully cooked and only needed to be charred heated. 

7. Through-the-Garden Wraps

Grill marinated chicken thighs over the fire. Cut into strips. Load a tortilla with chicken strips, diced cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, Ranch dressing, and Honey mustard dressing. 

8. Apple Crisp

Wrap your favorite apple crisp recipe in layers of tinfoil and bake it over coals. Serve with ice cream. 

9. Evening Snacks

Not all snacks are created equal. I thought campfire snacks and marshmallows were synonymous. But I was completely and totally wrong. S'mores are like, so yesterday.
Cheese sticks. Poke a cheese stick onto a roasting fork and toast until it turns slightly brown and gets soft. But watch out! Once they get soft, they easily slip into the fire. 
Small smoky links
Shrimp, cooked in butter in a cast iron skillet and seasoned with Old Bay seasoning. I love brothers who bring shrimp to share. Never mind that I had One Shrimp. Next time I'll bring my own if I want any.
Steak. "There's nothing like going to bed on a belly full of warm meat," he said. I didn't try it so I can't verify that. I can say, though, that his steak was restaurant-quality, judging from the pack of wolves that hovered near his chair begging for a single bite. One lick. The bone. An I'll pay-you-for-it bite. An edge. An anything. Then moans of happiness over the pieces he shared.
Bacon. Wadded up on a roasting fork, or spread out on a Graber grill. Cooked over the morning fire when coffee is brewing. Or eaten around the fire in the evening. You can't go wrong with bacon. It is one food where campfire cooking rules. No mess to deal with, and no smoke alarm to scream in your ear just when you are vulnerably bending over a hot oven to remove a pan of sizzling bacon. Everyone should do bacon over the fire.
Pigs in a Blanket. Crescent roll dough wrapped around miniature smokies and poked onto a roasting fork. It worked well if you found the perfect angle above perfect coals in a perfect cross-breeze. But most of our campfires were roaring blazes which meant these piggies were a success if you prefer your food ebony on one side, doughy on the other, and chilly in between. But, hey. People eat anything around a fire. 

Except carefully guarded steak.

Painted Rocks

I've been mistaken for a creative person, but what I actually am is an avid borrower of non-patented ideas. I also am surrounded by great friends who bring smooth rocks, containers of paint, and brilliant suggestions to my kitchen table. Gail and her three children joined us for an art project of painting rocks and distributing them in parks for other people to find and keep.

Our project started with the happy chaos of selecting rocks, distributing paint, finding the right brushes, and choosing what we wanted to paint. Then we settled down to work and watched our rocks come to life.

The car my 3-year-old masterminded
 and couldn't part with.

While one layer of paint was drying, we baked other rocks at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, or until they were nice and hot. Then we used crayons to color the hot rocks. The crayon melts as you draw, filling in crooks and crannies and smoothing out the picture. Warning: Melted crayon runs, so if you try it, don't expect perfection.

"Painted" with crayon. Also a rock my son couldn't part with.

After lunch, the younger children drifted off to play and we moms and an almost-adult-daughter sat down with paints and rocks. It was quiet and restful. We painted every rock she brought. 

My favorite. Gail painted it.

Once the rocks were dry and sprayed with a clear sealant, we gathered children and rocks and went to parks to distribute them. The children put them on playground equipment, on edges and ledges, and in other noticeable hidey holes. 

We left Gail's pie on a picnic table.

It was easily our favorite art project of the year, making it a great way to end a school term.

Not long afterwards, our family went to Virginia to visit grandparents. I noticed a small, beautifully painted rock on their back deck and asked about it. The rock was a gift. Someone had anonymously placed a painted rock on every mailbox post on their street. 

I felt warmed by the story. Someone else out there knows the fun of planning, painting, and placing rocks for other people to enjoy.