Prior to moving here, I had never experienced a summer filled with camps. As a child, we enjoyed one week of Vacation Bible School and had the rest of the summer to blow - riding bikes, lying around in the shade trying to catch a breeze, and capturing frogs and lightning bugs. While I do see the value in some of the cool camps offered every summer, I wanted to strike a balance between unique opportunities and unscheduled time to completely decompress.
The first camp week was for everyone except for Dr. Jiggles who opted for "camp at home" and read most of the week away. Ziggity accompanied his Best Bud to sleep away camp sponsored by Best Bud's church. He apparently didn't realize that "sleep away" didn't mean you had to start sleeping immediately upon entering the caravan vehicles.
A week later, Ziggity return exhausted and happy, having built some new friendships and taken the time to reexamine his life and faith as he enters this new phase called adolescence.
Meanwhile, Sweet One and Little Weed #4 were enjoying half-day camps of their own. Sweet One attended a gymnastics camp with her favorite neighbor girl and #4 attended a Lego Engineering Camp. Sweet One had a blast bouncing, running, and climbing her way through the week.
Little Weed #4 was a little nervous about his camp experience. While he already knew the directors of the camp, this was his first experience (since joining our family) with being dropped off at a location and having no parents or siblings anywhere in the building. On the first day, I had to drop #4 off a few minutes early and immediately run Sweet One and her friend across town to their camp. Dr. Jiggles and I had agreed that if #4 had any trouble separating at drop off, Dr. Jiggles would stay with him to help him acclimate while I ran the girls to gymnastics. While I was thrilled that Dr. Jiggles would so willingly do this for his little brother, it turned out to be completely unnecessary. Before I had even finished signing him in, #4 had spotted a huge bin of Legos and was off to investigate. Apparently Legos trump abandonment issues - score!
I made sure to arrive plenty early for pick up. I walked into the room and saw their first big building project.
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| Now THAT'S a tower! |
. They had also build their first motorized vehicle and learned what a transmission was.
We went home that first day with a very enthusiastic little engineer eager to own his own vehicle-building parts. Unfortunately, some of the parts needed only come as parts of other larger (and pricier) kits.
After getting the recap of the day, I asked him if he was excited to return to camp tomorrow. He stopped in his tracks, said, "I do another camp?" I then realized that I may have neglected to fully explain that "camp" means returning to the same place several days in a row. Oops. Once I explained that he got to build for another four days, he was plenty satisfied.
Over the course of those days, he built two more vehicles each with a different type of transmission, a gondola, a bridge, a home fully accessorized with Lego-furniture, and a top with motorized spinner.
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| Gondola Wars! |
All in all, it was a good week for him. He got to create and build. He got to make some new friends. He got to see that he was still safe and capable away from his family. He got to see that we returned every day excited to see him and what he had created. And it was good.
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