Burn, Baby! Burn!

Another successful bonfire has now passed. This tradition started, unintentionally, in 2004. I honestly don't even remember how it came about; I guess I decided to have a bonfire and since my mom lived in the country, it was a good place to have one. Several friends came out and we had a small-ish fire in the backyard. My parents loved my friends and wanted to know when we would do it again, so I think we had another one in the spring of 2005. Then I continued to have them regularly in the fall. In 2007 my parents did some landscaping and set up a nice large fire pit.

This might have been the bonfire with the highest attendance. Let's see if I can remember everyone: Mommer, Joe, Dave, Krystal, Josh S, Isha, Ellen, Allison, Jenn, Kiersten, Andy, Chelsey, Dan, Lauren, Josh W, Kristie, Myssi, Adam, Chris, Doug, Suzi, Rachel, Ian and Heather. It was quite a cold night but with no wind, so it was pretty great weather for the bonfire. Thanks to everyone for coming and making it a blast. I feel blessed to have so many friends come out for this. It's quite a drive for most people, not to mention those that come from out of state (Jenn, Rachel)!

As part of the aforementioned landscaping, my parents took rocks from around their property to build the fire pit. Several larger stones (boulders?) are also placed around the pit. These are useful for sitting, when it's not 28 degrees outside, but for the bonfire most everyone brings camp chairs. Depending on chair locations, once it gets dark it can be difficult to see these boulders. Now, this has not come up in the past 3 bonfires but this year apparently it was an issue: three people tripped/fell over the boulders. This led to repeated proclamations “Watch out for the rocks!”, “There's a rock here!”, and discussions about how the rocks should be made more visible. I think we should put flags next to them that read, “There's a rock here!”

Chelsey pointed out that since I promote this as an annual event, “there should at least be t-shirts.” I think this was mostly in the vein of giving me a hard time (oh, there were other things...), but it's not a bad idea. I told her that I would blog about it today and people could suggest t-shirt ideas in the comments. She did not believe me but I informed her that I definitely needed the blog fodder since I'm posting every day this month. There you have it; leave your best bonfire t-shirt idea in the comments!

More bonfire-related posts to come, including the awesome (early) birthday present that I received.