Off to Camp

Our kids left for camp on Sunday. I joked that getting rid of them was my Father’s Day present, but the truth is that it is scary quiet in our house this week. When the kids are at camp my wife and I like to pretend we are newlyweds that didn’t get married with two daughters already in the mix. It’s fun, but we’re mostly happy to have them back home.

Our kids attend a camp that is about an hour from our home. It’s well-run and we feel like it’s a great environment for them. They both make friends and get challenged a bit and always seem just a little bit older when they come home. Or youngest goes for one week in a more traditional camp setting, while our oldest goes for two weeks to a program that is slightly more ‘adventure’ oriented. It’s always fun to hear their stories when we pick them up at the end of their session.

I also really enjoy the way the girls look when we arrive.  Hair that has been subjected to a combination of inattention, chlorine and sun is hard to replicate any other way. It’s probably the closest thing you will see to ‘surfer hair’ in Kentucky. And they both have a thin sheen of dust on them, which I find extraordinarily cute. My youngest is a self-confessed slob and proud of it. Her duffel will be filled with wet and dry clothes intermingled, dirt, leaves, sticks and more thank likely a permanent marker with no lid or a flashlight that has been left on for several days.  Our oldest will tell us stories that sound like they belong on an episode of Gossip Girl, her camping experience largely revolving around co-ed interaction these days. We learned last year that the benefit of now picking them up on separate weeks means we can actually absorb everything they have to say before we get home.

I’m not really sure why I’m writing about all of this, except maybe because I miss them (sorta) and kind of wish I could go to camp myself. I’m also glad that another generation has learned the joys of living the ‘strenuous life’.