Mail Call

Got a postcard today:

Hey Mom, Dad, and The Boy,

It's really fun here, even though its hot. The food is really good! We play camp games 2 a day! We have church services 2 a day. I like going swimming, but I like craft hill better. I have 9 cabin mates, 1 counselor and an LIT. We have Devos (Devotions) where there are 2 versions, cabin or self. I prefer cabin. Thanks for sending me to camp!

Excitedly,

The Girl

Ahh...that feels much better.

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Ohhhh, My Mama Heart

Just about broke it today.

The Girl left this morning for Bible Camp for the very first time. We've definitely been separated for this long before, but she's always been under the watchful eye of Grandma, so I sorta shrugged and yelled, "have a great time!" as I waltzed out the door.

This is entirely different. Now she needs to do so much by herself and for herself - sunscreen, bug spray, drinking enough water, eating her veggies...

...comforting herself (gulp - Mom Teddy, you'd better step up on this one).

Little Miss Independent has been bursting with excitement all week. This morning, she was still pretty pumped as we were waiting for her to be picked up:

But then those buses arrived. And all those kids started swarming. And she looked down at that big suitcase filled with enough clothes for Six. Whole. Days. And she looked up at me with wide, pleading eyes.

"Mom, I don't think I want to go to camp anymore. Can you take me home?"

GAH!!!

Holding my own tears back, I reassured her that all would be well and reminded her that Mom Teddy was always with her and that she has her church friend along who will be both bus buddy and cabin mate and that she'd have a great counsellor and super fun with all the crafts and activities.

So she gulped and nodded and put on her Brave Little Toaster face and marched right up to the bus attendant to give her name.

After which we had twenty minutes to chat through the open bus window waiting for the less timely parents and kids to slooooowly make it to the bus pickup area.

Super parenting fun time, thy name is standing vigil beside a girl who doesn't want to go to camp and is melting in triple-digit heat inside a schoolbus:

Let's get a closer look at that face brimming with excitement, shall we?

Sigh. She'll love it, I know. There's already FB pics up of her and her cabinmates and she's looking decidedly more cheerful. (Aside: Camp was definitely not as techsavvy in my day. The only way my parents knew I hadn't died on the way was when the phone call from the director didn't come.)

Now I just have to work at being a Brave Little Toaster myself. Saturday will be here before I know it - right?

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Project 164a: Closet Doors

The DIY flurry that is my house is starting to abate somewhat, but there's still a long list that we are sloooowly trying to tackle. Company one weekend and a quick trip up to Canada (heh heh, surprised my Mom for her birthday) were happily placed atop the to-do list, so we got a bit behind.

Caught up a bit this past weekend. The Husband reattached the soap holder to the shower tiles.

(She says she knows it wasn't an actual seat, but her feet were tired and she needed somewhere to sit so she could rest them.)

And I decided that 95 degree heat/ridonkulous humidity was the perfect time to paint some closet doors and shelves that are awaiting The Boy's final unpacking.

But before I could paint, we needed to plane the doors as they didn't slide quite right. Enter the world's cutest helper:

(His job was to hold the door steady while The Husband planed. That crazy hair of his pretty much acted like a spider web to all that sawdust. A sticky, sticky spider web.)

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Why Am I Such A Slacker Blogger?

I blame this:

Not the fanciest deck, maybe, but its unassuming appearance hides the fact that it is actually a wrinkle in the space-time continuum.

Grab a glass of something, sit back in one of those chairs...and suddenly it's an hour later.

Seriously, I don't know how it works. A few pieces of lumber beneath a canopy of trees has managed to suck untold hours out of my otherwise jam-packed productive I get *some* stuff done summer-is-for-slacking life. Not that I'm complaining, of course. They're pleasant hours.

Tell you what - since I"m not so great at blogging these days, why don't you pop by and waste some of those hours with me?

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Bonne Anniversaire!

I get tired of always working on Canada Day, listening to my beloved CBC hosts love up the Great White North, knowing that all my folks back home are hangin' out and grousin' about Stephen Harper (because there's no better way to be Canadian than mixing complaining and politics). I sit at my desk, surreptitiously wiping tears (don't laugh - I'm patriotic), listening to the chatter about 4th of July plans around me.

Not this year!

Nope, I took me a whole day off! This, in the land of "paid holiday time? But then they wouldn't be working," is fairly significant.

So how will I celebrate?

Painting the hallways, cleaning out the mudroom, catching up on laundry, putting the books on the shelves and drinking coffee all while trying not to melt given that it's already 28 degrees outside and it's not even 9 am.

Glorious and free, indeed.

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