Fire

Here in lovely Michigan we got two really cold nights as of late.  Fortunately they killed most of the mosquito population!  The kids have been asking for a fire, but before the cold nights, we would have been drained of blood!

-As a side note, where do the mosquitoes go in the winter? How do they come back next spring?  Do the eggs just go dormant and then when the weather warms up again they come back?

Anyway, this then makes it a wonderful time to have a little 'campfire'(though we're not camping) in the back yard.  This weekend we were lucky enough to fit in two.  One w/ the Crew on Friday night, and one at home last night.  Friday night we got to together w/ friends(the Crew) and spent the evening around their fire, it was mostly the adults as they kids all went off playing, which is nice.  Yesterday my Mom took the two youngest kids for a while, and my middle son was over at a friends house.  I decided to mow the front yard, and the weather was SO nice that I mowed the back too (usually one of the older boy's job).  It was nice and cool, not really warm enough to work up a sweat, sunny and just ahhh...lovely.  The smell of fresh cut grass and mower exhaust, just reminded me of fall.  Then I decided to put the pool away, it's just a quick set pool, I had drained it last weekend and we left it upside down over the play structure to dry out.  That thing is HEAVY even empty.  My oldest son saw me struggling w/ it out the window and came out to help me, God bless him.  We got it flipped back over and folded up, wrapped in a tarp and back in it's winter position.  Woohoo!

I'd picked up a bunch of sticks and some of them were more like LOGS that had fallen from the trees, and we did have a few good sized logs too, so I decided to have a fire.  Broke up some sticks, and some of the larger branches, and got her goin'.  Mom came back w/ the littles and also my brother's two boys.  So I told her why don't we just cook some hot dogs on the fire, and all hang around for a while.  We enjoyed some hot dogs, and marshmallows.  Unfortunately it was a little windy and the fire was a bit smokey, as the wood was not all the way dry, we had to keep moving since the wind kept changing direction, but we suffered through and the kids had fun, and that's all that matters.  Finally the wind died down and the fire was nice and hot, and we got to enjoy it for a little while.  What a nice weekend.  Today it's football game, and birthday party, groceries and getting ready for school tomorrow.