***Every summer we would go camping down at the ocean, for our vacation...but when we were not using the tent on vacation, it was always set up in our front yard, for my boys, and any invited neighborhood kids, to use for their sleeping quarters, if they wanted to do that...***
May God have already blessed you for that.
We’ve had a 7x7 tent set up in the front room for the past month and a half - we only took it down when we accepted a Wurlitzer upright piano from Sister Ludmilla (local food pantry manager) who had to move after the floods here and couldn’t take her piano. We were contacted and agreed to be an adoptive parent, as it were.
I fill in at Mass (usually when I walk in and am notified that the organist or cantor couldn’t make it) and am blessed with the gift of being able to read music and play the piano / organ / keyboads.
***Kids just naturally seem to love camping, and love sleeping in a tent, and gently roughing it...***
Very gently but pretending is a great thing.
When I said, gently roughing it, I was laughing to myself actually...we have camped with the tent in some really primitive places, where there was one outhouse(hold your nose)for all...you provide the toilet paper...one general water pump,(we even camped at one campground, and had to haul water from miles away)... no picnic tables(you provide your own folding table)....no marked campsites, just set up your tent wherever...
At least with the tent just out in front of the house, kids could run in or run home, to use the bathroom....ice cold drinks, necessary in the Carolina heat, were easily available in the house....
So the pretending part of them camping, was great...
Today, now that we are older, the hubby and I ‘rough’ it in our RV, and go to RV parks, complete with sewer, and electricity, TV reception, and internet connections, huge bathrooms and many showers, and the laundromat and store/souvenir shop...
But my memories of really roughing it in the tent, with no luxuries, are quite wonderful....all the RV parks blur together in my mind after a while, but those distinctive primitive campgrounds, remain quite clear and separate in my mind...