The Family Man’s Dinner Adventure

I was playing outdoors with my two boys Sunday afternoon when the rain began to fall. It fell hard enough to chase us indoors. About 45 minutes after we came in my two-year old asked if we could set up the tent in the living room. I asked him why he wanted to do that and he said, “I don’t want to get rain on my head.” When I pointed out that we were inside the house and it wasn’t raining in here he said, “I know. I just want to be sure.”

So the tent went up. It’s a dome tent about 4’ x 6’ that we received as a gift but have never used outdoors. Once every few months the boys want to play in it for a few hours, and then it is forgotten. This time we spent the rest of the afternoon playing in the tent – mostly a variation of ‘the three little pigs,’ where I am the pig in the house and the boys are wolves. It goes like this –

Boys - “Little pig, little pig, let me come in!”
Dad - “Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin!”
Boys – “Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in,” at which point they charge in though the flap and we wrestle for a minute, before racing back out to do it again.

Fortunately, they tire of this after about 90 minutes. At which point I thought we were through for the night – until my four-year old said, “Why don’t we eat dinner in the tent!” My hopes were dashed when Mom said, “That’s a great idea!”

So the four of us crammed into the tent in our living room and ate dinner.

I guess it was a good idea – we didn’t get rained on.