Fire Pit

I've never had a fire pit before.   We've had many friends who've had one, including our friends at the lake yesterday.   Their fire pit was more of the full pit variety with them having dug into the slope in their yard heading down to the lake and then adding a retaining wall with stone pavers.   In the middle was a fire pit surrounded by chairs that faced out towards the lake. 

Last night, after a dinner of tacos eaten by everyone once the boat had come in from the lake, we headed down to the fire pit which had been lit and stoked a short while earlier.   In addition to enjoying the view of the lake and sky, we were serenaded by a few cicadas that saw fit to arrive a year before the main seventeen-year swarm next year.   Zivy, their dog, dispatched of them in short order with some deft leaps and snaps. 

We selected one of a collection of natural sticks, taken from the surrounding trees and loaded up a marshmallow.  Once the marshmallow was deemed "done", which varied from soft and white all the way to fully charred and barely marshmallow-like anymore, it was sandwiched between two graham crackers with some chocolate.  My children tried to eat as many as they could manage while the adults thought about calories and waistlines and unable to resist, joined in.

I like fire pits but they seem like a lot of work.   Only now we have one of our own.  Our neighbors gave us theirs when they moved.  Blake was over here today because my son asked if he could please come to play Minecraft with him and could I tell him he missed him,  I had a thought: this was Blake's fire pit before he moved and he knew how to make it work.   Maybe we could have our own marshmallow roasting tonight?

I asked my husband to pick up some supplies when he went to get groceries and asked Blake if he could start the fire in a bit.   Both were amenable.   My children were more than happy about s'mores in their own back yard. 

So tonight, for the first time, we had a fire pit at our house.   The smoke was a bit messy with a wind that couldn't make up its mind on direction but otherwise, the weather was nice.  Next time, I'm going to have to ask Blake to show me what he did to get things started because the fire pit had two inches of water in it this afternoon and yet he seemed to have no trouble starting a fire tonight.   

The Big Boy Update:  Blake sent my son on a stick collection mission.   The reward: a fire for making s'mores.   My son looked all around the house and down the hill and found lots of sticks to kindle the fire with.   Now that he knows it's a necessary job in the whole process, I'm going to send him off for fire sticks in the future. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter asked me if she could give out the materials for the s'mores tonight.  I didn't realize it, but she's always been given the chocolate, marshmallow, and graham crackers for a single serving at a time.  She wanted to be the one to break the crackers, open the chocolate, and divide it up and let people get the marshmallows out of the bag she was holding.   It seems like a trivial job to an adult, but it was nice to do something for others, instead of having things done for her this time.