moos backup: Bonfire!

Today was finally the day of our big bonfire! In the morning we headed over to the town fire station to get a burn permit. Emily and Kate loved seeing the fire trucks up close.

Captain Roy signed off on our permit. He wanted to make sure we had a shovel, three buckets of water, and at least two adults at the fire. We told him that would be no problem.

We started the party around 6:00, with food and music in the garage. We wanted to have a place where people could warm up, eat, drink, and not worry about muddy boots, and the garage was perfect.

The girls were totally ready to party. They had been talking about the bonfire all week, and they were both pretty excited. Emily even vowed to stay up all night, or at least until the fire was out.

Uncle Seth's family showed up, and the kids got a kick out of playing basketball with their cousins.

There were lots of kids at the party--besides the cousins, Luke, Alison, Eli, and Addison all came. The kids enjoyed hot dogs and fruit salad at their special table.

Finally Brenda and Mark decided to light the fire. Brenda had some leftover kerosene to help get it started, while Mark brought his "secret ingredients." Yes, Mark is smoking a cigarette while holding flammable materials in the photo below.

The Christmas tree went up first, and it looked pretty dramatic....

....then the whole pile went up in a big fireball! It was fantastic! Brenda was really happy that we had gone to the effort to get a permit, just in case things got out of hand.

Now that's what we're talking about!

The crowd was in awe of the giant flames.

Emily was very happy with the bonfire.

Grandma L. thought it was pretty great too.

Kate wasn't quite sure if it was really cool, or really scary.

Even our neighbors came over to see what all the ruckus was about!

There were a lot of guesses about how long it would burn.

It sure threw out some heat, which was nice because the temperature was about 30 degrees.

The kids had fun chasing down the embers and stomping on them.

Eventually the fire burned down enough to toast some marshmallows.

After awhile the party moved back to the garage, where the drinks were flowing.

Emily really wanted to stay up all night, but her little eyes kept drifting shut on their own. She finally went to bed about 9:00, which is two hours later than usual.