"What did you do this weekend, N?"

"Well, Thursday night I asked Mommy and Daddy if I could sleep in the garage in my sleeping bag, but they wouldn't let me. So instead, this weekend I went camping!"



"Oh, how fun. Where did you go?"

"Valley of Fire. But we didn't get to camp there because the sites were all full."



"Oh, that's too bad. So you came home?"

"No, I convinced my parents to camp near the lake."

"Oh, good. Did you have a fun time?"

"Well, yah, I guess so. But it took a few campsites to find anywhere to put up our tent. That took so long Daddy had to set up the tent in the dark. And the wind didn't help with that, particularly when the stakes wouldn't go through the caliche layer without a lot of words Mommy and Daddy tell me not to use."







"Oh, dear."

"Mommy got a fire going right away, but half the hot dogs rolled off the grate into the dirt. And while Daddy sat down to scarf down his one hotdog for dinner, the battery in the car died from having to light up the tent so Daddy could put it up."

"Oh, my. I bet you all slept really well after a day like that, didn't you?"

"I did. I did find myself perpindicular [yes, she does know that word, LOL - or, at least, can pronounce it.] to how I went to sleep. We stayed up late telling silly ghost stories, and just as I nodded off, the people across from us drank a lot of beer, and Daddy says probably a bottle of Vodka each, and they stayed up really really late talking really really loudly about things that Mommy and Daddy were glad I was asleep for so I didn't hear."

"hmmmmm"

"But it rained on them, and most of them didn't have a tent to sleep in, so Daddy was kinda smug in the morning, and didn't complain when A and I got up at the crack of dawn and started talking really loudly about how much we like camping, or how much we had to pee."



"Did you have a good time after that?"

"Oh, yes. S crawled all over the tent - she's just started crawling, and really likes it. After we packed up, we headed to Valley of Fire and we got to climb a lot of rocks and look at petroglyphs, and have ice cream, too. Next time, though, Daddy says we have to camp somewhere with softer ground."





"I bet you're glad to be home."

"No, I wanted to stay and climb a bunch more rocks. I think A did, too, but she was getting really cranky. She's asleep on the living room floor now. She collapsed there right after she walked into the house. S is playing with A's legs, seeing if she can wake her up (even though Mommy put her across the room from her big sister), but she's not budging."