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My kids are still young (5 and 7) so we don’t want to take them camping in the woods or at a campsite, but they begged us to take them camping so we decided to camp in the backyard. They weren’t too thrilled with that idea but we went ahead and did it anyway. When the kids came home from school on Friday, we had some bags ‘packed’ and my husband and I were dressed like we were going for a hike in the woods – hiking boots, hat, shorts etc. This got our boys giggling and they went up and got dressed for camping. We planned to spend the weekend in the backyard, and made a pact not to go inside to get anything or do anything except use the bathroom. We set up a tent in the backyard (it was a traditional pole-tent so it was a pain to set up, especially since the kids kept stealing the poles to make it harder for us). We also had a fire that was very small. Friday and Saturday night we roasted hotdogs on sticks and grilled chicken on one of those grills you put over a fire. We also had provisions of chips, carrots and dip, apples, some pre-made pasta-salad and marshmallows which the boys enjoyed setting on fire. When it got dark we had flashlights and we sat around the fire and made up a scary story about our backyard being a haunted forest. During the day we took a walk out to the creek and fished and swam. We didn’t catch anything but it was fun. We also had a football that the boys threw around with dad, and we went on a walk through some nearby parks and at night we had sparklers for the boys to play with. Our kids ended up really enjoying the fake camping trip!