Four More Days Until Camp!!!

I tremble ever so slightly as I write this.

I don’t know why I get so nervous leading up to camps, I mean, I’m experienced, I’m prepared: I’ve written the curriculum, I have the materials and I know what I’m doing – what’s the big deal???

It’s just me.
To be honest, I get nervous about pretty much any new endeavor, even driving to a place I’ve never driven to before freaks me out a little! The weird thing is, I can’t survive without those freak out moments. I like change, even change that scares me, so I often find myself out of my comfort zone, swearing to myself silently, and promising that ‘I’ll never do this again’ – but I do, I always do!

My kids are like this as well, I think most kids are. In fact, I think one of the reasons that I get along with kids so well, is that certain aspects of my ten-year-old persona have stuck with me permanently. I find it very easy to empathize with kids about a lot of things.

Last Week
Last week, we drove up to the beach for my birthday. We ate snacks very messily (my son in particular) and listened to many audio books on the way. One audio book that we love listening to is Roald Dahl’s The Twits. It is so very, very silly and disgustingly funny, and my stomach ached from laughing at it uncontrollably. Later on, my nine year old daughter and I kept retelling all the yuckiest bits of the story over and over again, guffawing to ourselves, while my husband listened to us with a fixed expression of polite patience on his face.
When we got to the beach, we played in the water and sand, I spotted a shark and had a ‘minor’ panic attack, my son built many sand castles, and I built a sand dinosaur that my daughter walked all over by mistake (how do you not notice a sand dinosaur?). On July the 4th, it literally rained on our parade, the fireworks and carnival were cancelled, everything was closed, so the kids spent the evening in our hotel room watching a movie and eating microwave popcorn. We lived through it, and many other tiny disappointments, and awesomely fun moments, and came back happy and exhausted.

The vacation made me remember another, very important, fact about kids: they are much more forgiving than adults. Children are still learning the ropes, when it comes to life, and are the best people to be around when you make a mistake, or an idiot of yourself. Fall off your bike, snort juice out of your nose while laughing, forget to pack tennis balls with your racket, or sit on paint (as I did in the Great Noctiluna Camp of ’13) and it’s okay, as long as you can take a bit of mild teasing.
Every time I remember this fact, I feel much less nervous about the next six weeks, because I know I’m going to be with my most favorite people, and it’s going to be awesome!!

Assateague Beach

Sand birthday cake

Obligatory birthday reading from a friend

So funny!