Yo!

 

My mother got this idea that we should go camping as a family. I thought, "Oh, she'll forget about it soon enough," but I was wrong. Next thing I know, Mom was asking the neighbors if they had a tent. They brought over an enormous tent that can fit all of us! Our neighbors, being as kind as they were, even set it up for us!

 

Now, my Mom's original plan was to have me and my sister sleep outside in a tent, alone, but now that we got a big tent Mom decided that we were all going to sleep in it. My sister came over and when she saw the tent she shrieked with joy, unlike my Dad's reaction, which was, "Wha... Why, Tori?" 

 

"Why would we do this?" I heard Dad ask Mom.

 

"Because it's fun!" she replied in a voice. I've noticed that when she's excited about a silly thing, and she knows it's silly, she has this voice, it's hard to describe it's like... bubbly, high pitched and positive? I guess?

 

"So does that mean we're going to bed the same time as the kids?" Dad groaned.

 

"Yes, or we can all just stay up late!"

 

There was nothing stopping my mother.

 

So that night we watched two episodes of the tv show we all like: Modern Family and then we gathered some books, stuffed animals, blankets and pillows, and headed outside to the tent. 

Let me just say, I am not the outdoorsiest person so I was not very happy about this, like my father. We sighed and put our stuff in the tent.

My little sister, Naomi, did this dance that she does when she's super happy about something. Her dance is so funny. 

 

"It's almost worth it just for this," my dad said with a laugh as we watched Naomi. Naomi was sooooo happy to be doing this, she was, like, overly excited. I totally didn't understand why. But anyway, Naomi wanted me to read her the third chapter of Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself, a great book by Judy Blume. So I did. After that, we all chatted about anything and everything. 

 

Okay, I gotta admit, that part was quite fun. 

 

Me and Naomi couldn't stop laughing so finally my Mom said, "Girls, don't disturb the neighbors, be more quiet," so I said, "Yeah, let's use our outside voices," and Dad went ballistics and cracked up saying stuff like, "that's the perfect line in a script" and all that (he's a screenwriter) so then I laughed harder and so did Naomi and finally everyone was laughing. It was really fun. 

Anyway, the grown-ups stopped laughing but Naomi and I couldn't stop, we were wide awake. 

 

I heard Mom whisper to Dad, "Neil, they might outlast us," meaning we (the kids) might fall asleep later than them (the parents) which made me and Naomi laugh even harder. 

At some point I also heard Mom say, "We're an outdoorsy family!" It's what she says when we do one thing outdoors, like taking a 10 minute walk. She's always like, "We're such an outdoorsy family!" and it's really funny when she says it in her bubbly voice. 

 

Finally, we got tired. 

As I was trying to fall asleep, Mom then decided to rearrange our positions in the tent. So she did. I was tired, cold, and just really needed to get to sleep so I was mad. 

"I wanna sleeeeeeep," I whined. Hey, I was extremely exhausted. So after the tent was rearranged completely, I finally got to sleep. 

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It's hard to maintain asleep because MY FATHER WAS SNORING. Not the little, "rrhhh" but the "ROOOOHHHH SHHHHH ROOO ROOHHHH". It ended up waking up my mother, too, and we were the farthest away from him. So Mom told me to poke him so he would stop but he just kept snoring. I don't know how, but I finally fell asleep again.

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In the morning I woke up and started reading the Sally J. Freedman book to myself (I had already read it but like 2 years ago). And guess what: Now Mom was snoring. Softer than Dad, but still.

 

I think I woke up early because I had time to finish the whole book of Sally J. Freedman.

Anyway, the next thing I know Naomi and Mom wake up and Mom checks the time: it's 8:22 a.m. So Mom decides to go in the house and make breakfast. Thank goodness, because I was hungry. 

 

Basically the story ends there.

 

This was the story of the outdoorsy family that we are (hehe) and our camping trip in the backyard. 

 

Overall, here are the emojis to describe the time I had: 😆 🤣 😑 

See ya,

Zia

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