The Tent

This morning started way too late. It's technically my husband's Saturday, his first day off after working three twelve-hour shifts. So it was reasonable to sleep in until 9:00 AM (don't you think???), but not altogether helpful considering that the kids were up making messes before we were. And there's a fresh layer of snow on the ground. Needless to say, the initial mood-of-the-day was rather gloomy, both indoors and outdoors.

Days like these always require me to be very purposeful in keeping a good attitude. And coffee is an absolute necessity. Providentially, just a couple days ago, Nancy Wilson posted this on the Femina blog. It was still fresh in my mind, and inspired me to do something special.

So we built a tent.

Homemade tents were a big part of my childhood. I remember my mother building my brother and me tents with the dining room chairs and a quilt before we were able to set them up ourselves. Once we were capable, we became master tent builders, creating some pretty cool stuff, if I do say so myself. One of our favorite things to pretend was that we were pioneers on the Oregon trail, and of course, no proper pioneer family is without a covered wagon; our tent building skills came in handy at this point.

As we got older, we tried our hands at outdoor tent building. We'd load up our little red wagon with an old blanket, ropes, and random pieces of wood and would head out to our field to set up camp. For some reason, attempts at outdoor tents never went very well unless Dad helped, and when he did we had an awesome time! We'd occasionally digress from playing Oregon trail and pretend we were the children of Israel, wandering in the desert (and why was that fun?). Once, we got Dad to be John the Baptist, and we kids were a homeless family who needed a tent. I know that story isn't in the Bible, but we were sure John the Baptist was the type who'd have done a charitable thing like that. :)

Anyhow, I have lots of great memories attached to tent building. And today tents are one of the tools in my mommy arsenal when it comes to gloomy days. Thanks Dad and Mom! :)

And, yeah, they're still in their jammies. :)