man makes fire!

when i got back from my little adventure today, i really felt like a fire. that's all i could think about when i got home. after dinner, the boys and i gathered up all this firewood that i bought years ago, but somehow it got scattered all over the yard, and garage, and used of various bike ramps, and box stands.. etc. we got all the wood together, and i tried to show the kids how to start a fire... the trouble is, that i was never very good at starting fires. luckily, i had been watching survivor man and had some new skills to try, i made all these little wood shavings and small kindling wood pieces with increasing sizes. i stacked them all together in this little wood tee pee, ready for the match. just before i lit the match i remembered to open the damper, when i opened it a bunch of soot fell down on top of my little stack of super cool wood burning structure. i kind of just moved the soot off of the top but all the shavings were covered. i went ahead and tried to start the fire that way but it wasn't working even after fifteen matches. i gave up and decided to just let alex and dominic try it while i ate my dinner. they couldn't do it either until i told them to use a little bit of news paper. that worked and we had pseudo fire warmth. we really didn't feel warm from the fire because we had the glass "screen" that kind of blocks the heat from entering the room. we cracked them open just a little and helped ... just a little.

since we haven't had a fire going for about five years now, we were all really excited. it's pretty funny how such a little thing gets us all going. let's have s'mores! dang it! no marshmallows ....or gram crackers... or chocolate. well, it would be such a waste to not have s'mores with the five year fire. off to the store i went. when i got back, it tried to show everyone how to make them... but as usual, i never had s'mores in my life, but having heard so many people talk about it, i felt like i had had them before for some reason. so i put a couple of marshmallows at the end of my stick and kept them just far enough away from the flame so that they would turn a golden brown. things were going pretty well, until i started to notice the mess that we had made while trying to start the fire. with my free hand i started to pick up some of the wood pieces and put them into our wood box. i started to get into it a little, then briefly glanced over at my marshmallow. and it was right next to the biggest flame .... and on fire! i pulled it out and had to blow out the flames, but it was no use, it was complete charcoal [i ate it anyway, the chocolate covered up the burn taste] and for the kids and wife ... well they weren't too impressed. i believe that my apparent ineptness gave the kids confidence to do new things :)