Campout

Ali decided that we should have a campout tonight, with hot dogs, and marshmallows, and soda. I told him no soda.
So at dinner time I cooked up the hotdogs and served everything up on the living room floor- even the soda. Leila ate everything, as usual, and Ali jumped up and down doing this and that, worked his way through the brocoli and corn chips and soda, but had to be cajoled into eating a few bites of hot dog. He was pretending that drinking the soda turned him into a t-rex- a nice one that came over and gave me a hug. And then he drank it again to turn back into Ali, and came back over to give me another hug. Leila was turning into a cheetah ("because we're in the jungle")by eating brocoli. I petted her newly shorn head and scratched her behind the ears as she purred.
I told them about going on picnics with my granny, who carried a kerosene stove to brew up tea or coffee even at brief stops. Leila said, "You must miss the time when you were a child."
I roasted the smores over the gas flames of the stove (Leila wanted to have a campfire, or at least pretend, but we never got to that.) While they were eating those, I stuck glow in the dark stars onto the ceiling so that the kids could pick out constellations as from their sleeping bags.
Then Leila read us a book by the light of our lantern (floor lamp, really). And we said our prayers. She thought it the greatest day ever!
(Before actually settling down for sleep my little technofiles had to watch a video on YouTube.)