Fancy Nancy Inspired Backyard Campout.

So do you guys read the Fancy Nancy Books?   You totally should.  The whole premise is that there's this little girl - a curly haired redhead - who believes that everything is better if it's fancy.  Sounds like someone I know:

 Fancy Nancy goes on all sorts of adventures.  She explores nature, is an Artist, is in a ballet, cuts her hair, runs her own fashion boutique , etc. etc.  All of them have some sortof message (be happy for your friend's achievements, be nice to your siblings, bugs are not gross, etc.) and all of them are adorable.  We always come home from the library with several of them.

(And now that I had to search for those links I leaned of many more adventures and want to buy ALL OF THE FANCY NANCY BOOKS GAH.  I also learned that a series of chapter books called Nancy Clancy exists for older kids.  We may need to get one of those...)

Anyways!

Fancy Nancy: Stellar Stargazer! is her favorite.  In it Nancy pretends to be an astronaut:

Learns about the constellations:

And sleeps out in a tent in the backyard with her dad:

My daughter loves this book.  So about the 10th time we checked this out from the library I told her that maybe this summer she could have a campout with her dad.  Just like Fancy Nancy.

She's been excited about this idea for months.  Problem being we've been a bit too preoccupied with something to actually make this happen yet:

And the weather has been... not Stellar.  So last weekend we decided to just do it already.  Worst case it rains and they come inside.  Not like they are backpacking in the wilderness or anything.  So we got out the tent:

And Matt set it up (teaching the kids a few new cuss words in the process).  They were super into helping:

 And consulted the book to know what steps were next:

 And then... it started raining.  It was just a drizzle at first... so we stood outside debating what to do.  And the skies opened.  We all ran to the tent.  I'm not sure why - our house was closer.  I threw the baby in to Matt it was raining so hard.  And all 5 of us plus the dog were in the tent while it was raining buckets.

This is not the best of plans.

While we waited for a slight break in the storm to run inside our kids learned a great life lesson:  camping in the rain sucks.

 But we made due.  S'mores in the microwave aren't as good but they are still pretty tasty:

 The next day the weather was beautiful.  The tent had dried out from the storms the previous night so we were good to go.  The kids spent all day playing in it:

 And we were able to do the whole camping thing - grilling out, s'mores,

fire, sparklers...

 Wine...

I don't recommend camping without it!

And then the big finale - sleeping in the tent.  In the book Nancy's sister cries and goes inside.  In our little story there was NO WAY someone was going to be left out just because he's little:

So all 3 of them - girl, dude, and daddy - slept in the tent.  The next morning my girl told me this:

"It stormed last night and it was only for a little bit but I think there was lightning and I wasn't afraid.  No.  I wasn't afraid at all. And I slept in the tent ALL NIGHT!"

Which translated from kid means "I was TERRIFIED but I was brave and stuck it out and I'm SO PROUD!"

Yay for summer fun!