Fires are fun

I have a husband who can't keep his fingers out of a burning candle if there's one in front of him.  He'll stick his fingers in the wax or roll up a piece of paper to try to make a mini-torch - anything to be playing with fire.

So a couple times each year we build a real fire, and for one or two of those fires, we try to make a party out of it. 

We scheduled this year's bonfire on the evening of the day that we were going spelunking.  Probably not the wisest idea, but DH was convinced that we could pull it off.  On top of that, if we didn't have it this weekend, we wouldn't be able to reschedule it until late November, and late November can be reeeeeally cold.

So we whipped up an evite and sent it out into the cyber-net-world.

And very quickly the "no" replies starting coming in.

Apparently this was a bad weekend.  The majority of people that we invited couldn't make it for one reason or another.  During the first two weeks or so following the sending of the evite, it was pretty much me, DH, my sister, and one of his co-workers.  We were discouraged but after debating the pros and cons of rescheduling, decided to leave it as is.  Thankfully a few people responded "yes" in the week or so preceding the event and the bonfire was on.

And I'm so glad they came.

Initially we were sad that it was going to be a fairly small group.  But in retrospect, this was one of the better, funner bonfires we've had.  The people there were all good, quality people who could easily start a conversation with people that they didn't necessarily know that well.  During some of our larger bonfires in the past, they were so big that no everyone could sit around the fire, and people would branch off into separate little groups.  But on this occasion, we could all sit around the fire - close enough to stay warm - and we could have one big conversation as a group.  It was fun.  I didn't feel overly stressed out about feeling the need to be the buffer between groups, or to have to entertain those one or two people who weren't talking to anyone.  For perhaps the first time ever, I could really relax and just enjoy the fire.

Chillin'

Murph loves bonfires too but they make him oh-so-tired

It turns out that when you take pictures from the other side of the fire, they get all crazy wavy on you!

And it turns out that when you give the camera to DH for any length of time, you get a lot of pictures of him.

Thanks to everyone who came this past weekend - we had a blast.  And thanks to everyone who brought mountain pie makers, s'mores fixings (and for leaving the marshmallows!), pizza sauce and cheese, and everything else that we forgot to get because we were too busy thinking about spelunking.  It's people like you that make these get-togethers so much fun.

Fire is good.