Y'all Hush: Backwoods Birthday

Dear Laney,

For your 8th birthday, you decided you wanted an overnight group camping trip with all of your friends and their families. I reserved five campsites next to each other at the closest lake campground to Missoula so we'd have enough room for everyone to come. At $20/piece for the night, this was actually cheaper than most kid party ideas in town and had a more epic feel to it than a pizza at the bowling alley. And if there's one thing we've learned about your birthday gatherings, it's that you (okay, WE) like them to be big-time productions.

We wanted to have a big celebration because not only were you turning 8, but your dad was home and everyone wanted to see him.

One problem we hadn't anticipated is that most of Montana was on fire last summer. We had the biggest wildfires in the nation, and checked the news every morning for air quality alerts. Many days, it was "hazardous," and we were advised not to leave our houses. This is why the eclipse wasn't all that impressive at our house; we'd spent most of the summer with smoke blotting out the sun, anyway. One of the biggest fires in the region was just northwest of where we'd reserved campsites and we didn't know until the very last minute if we'd be able to go, or if our friends would be game to join us.

On Friday, the air at the campsite was only "unhealthy" (which is what it was in Missoula, anyway) so we decided to chance it. We arrived a day before everyone else, and decorated our campsites.

Our luck held out, and all of our friends decided to join us.

Because severe fire restrictions were in place, we weren't allowed to have a campfire or even a grill with an open flame. This became a fun cooking challenge: how do you feed 19 people in the woods with no fire? Only by luck/chance, one of the sites I'd reserved had an electric outlet. I prepped all the ingredients for a taco bar in bags in the cooler, including pre-grilling and shredding a bunch of chicken, so when dinnertime rolled around, all I had to do was heat the chicken in a pot on a plug-in hotplate. It came together like a miracle with salsa on top.

For dessert, we couldn't have an frosted cake (it wouldn't travel well in 95-degree heat), we couldn't have ice cream (couldn't keep it frozen) and we couldn't do s'mores (no open fire). So I made a tray of brownies and let everyone make their own s'more sundae.

Instead of doing goodie bags, I bought a tie-dying kit and some dollar store bowls, and every kid got to make their own t-shirt as a memento of the weekend.