Backyard Back to School Campout Sleepover 2013

A few years ago we started a tradition of having a big back-to-school sleepover for the boys right before school starts. 

One year we did a BBQ themed:

2010

Another year we did a Mario Cart Wii themed:

2012

and this year we decided on a Camping theme, likely we will stick with this theme:

Each of the boys get to pick a couple of friends to invite and usually some friends of the family come for the evening with their girls too. 

This year Andy's crew was Devin, Ryan, Blake & Lane

Zach's crew was Isaac, Logan

Luke's crew was Ian, Riggin, Lucas

Then we also had the Beihl family, Steve & Minna, Talia, Tavey & Griffen

When everyone started to arrive we sent them out in the backyard on the playground. We ended up with 15 kids. When they were all here I had them sit down for a pep talk on the ground rules. 

Next we came inside where I had laid out a white t-shirt with everyone's name across the top of the back then "Tonsager Boys Campout 2013" across the bottom of the back in black. Then all the boys went around and signed each one except their own with a colored sharpie. I had to help the preschoolers and it was a little difficult when the fabric pulled to form some of the letters but they all ended up legible. 

After this I instructed them each to flip over their t-shirt and fold under the sleeves. Each t-shirt had a large square of cardboard inside it to help protect from bleeding through. Once they were all set with a blank white canvas as the front of their shirts, they were told to make a design on the front that could be anything they wanted. Some ideas were campfire, s'mores, tents, ect. After everyone had a good picture going, I passed out syringes and sillicone cupcake liners with a small amount of rubbing alcohol in them. The next instruction was to slowly drip alcohol over their drawings and watch the colors spread, or "tie dye". The kids loved it and the designs turned out pretty darn neat!!

After this we set the shirts out to dry and headed out front to make s'mores and roast hotdogs. With 15 kids and a baby, I deiced to number them off according to how many skewers we had. I started with a random middle number that seemed to have the most quiets adn calm kids in it and called that number to approach th efire and grab a stick. Once they had their mallows done, we called the next number. It worked pretty well and Minna and Steve were great with helping with crowd control. I was very firm that noone was to get out of their chair unless their number was called or they would have strike one, once you got to three for the whole night your parents were called. Everyone listened fantastically well at this point. When the group's mallows were done, Minna and I would bring chocolate and graham crackers to them. I will be going back to the fudge striped cookies next year instead so there is less mess and less cost. All though I did use generic chocolate and generic graham crackers to cut cost a bit. 

Once everyone had done a hot dog and two marshmellows we let them roll in the grass and wrestle a while while I set up the next event.... a movie on the garage!!!

I sat out the 20 chairs (15 kids, 4 adults and 1 baby who has an awesome chair I reccommend for anyone with a baby who loves being outdoors). into 3 large rows toward the end of the driveway and sat a blanket on each. If they wanted to lay down, they could do that toward the top of the driveway. Everyone also got a Hefty cup full of juice with their name on it and a brown lunchbag full of popcorn. We have our own popcorn machine which has been an amazing investment through family movie nights, snacks, daycare, preschool, and sleepovers. 

We put on the movie Sandlot. Most of the kids passed out during the movie and Beihls left part way through. At some point someone woke up and they all decided to move to the tent. Once they moved to the tent though, of course they were wide awake. At this point we were down to 10 kids sleeping in the tent:

Andy, Devin, Ryan, Blake, Lane, Zach, Isaac, Ian, Riggin, & Luke. At midnight we lost another one. One preschool got scared in the tent and wanted to go home after everyone else is asleep. :( poor little guy

In the morningthe kiddos had our traditional sleepover breakfast of homemade donuts and juice. Next we packed up all our stuff and changed into clothes (this is hard to get some little boys to do, some end up going home in jammies). 

The last thing we did was have a neighborhood scavenger hunt. I paired a big boy with a small boy and sent them with a brown bag and a homemade scavanger hunt I had made. It was a sucess and by the end of it, it was raining and all the parents had arrived. NAP TIME!!!

Budget:

Pop corn & oil we get at Sam's Club in bulk. The popcorn is $16 for 50 lbs and we had been working on the same bag for two years....let's say we used $1 worth maybe.

The oil is around $6-10 for a gallon. We'll say we used $2 of it.

Lunch bags, lets say $1 worth of the package.

The juice was $2 a package that has 6-8 pouches of 2qt mix, we used 4 pouches, lets say $1

2 packages of hotdogs $2

1 bag of marshmellows $1

1 box of graham crackers $2.50

2 packages of generic chocolate $5

1- 4 pack of biscuts for donuts (some sugar and oil) $2.50

T-shirts I scored on sale 2- 8 packs at $6.99 each...$14

Rubbing alcohol $1.50

Most of the above was already on hand and not used all the way up.

Approximate total budget: $33.50

Not too bad!!

Sleepover Lost & Found...

Another crazy sleepover in the books!