 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 And so began one of the most successful and fun adventures we, as grandparents, have ever done! |
.
. . |
|||||||||||||||||||
| YEAR 4 for Camp Grandma started 3 weeks early with a sign written with a yellow flair pen on our back door that said “Camp Grandma is Coming”. One of the boys came by and left the excited message before their school was over for the year! Thus started our 4th year of camp!! | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
The opening day of camp, the boys rigged up a fireworks display for us in front of the house. Keep in mind, this was at 7:55 A.M. on Monday morning and I imagine the neighbors woke up with a ‘bang’!!! (See the photo–it was impressive.) Again, we had 3 boys (cousins), ages 9, 10 and 13. Grandpa and the boys thoroughly enjoyed doing “boy” things. Like other years, I sent each child a colorful invitation (printed on my printer), and they called almost every day just to talk about camp and what we might do. (They never know ahead of time what the agenda is...that way there are no questions about tomorrow, and we can concentrate on ‘today’! |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
We visited a fire museum, a cave and a fish hatchery; climbed rocks at Gettysburg; played in a water spill at a state park and went tubing down the Susquehanna River. |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||
|
The last day we always have Camp Olympics–a bunch of competitive games that are more fun than skill. This year the big hit was the frozen t-shirts. I got a t-shirt from each boy several weeks before camp, soaked them in water, wrung them out well, folded them as small as I could and then put them in the freezer. On the day of the games, I gave each child a shirt that was as hard as a brick, and the first one to get it on was the winner. What cold fun that was!!! |
||||||||||||||||||||
 |
Friday afternoon at 4:30 the boys went home to play with their bullwhips again and Grandma and Grandpa cleaned up the house and took a long nap! Before the week was over, they were talking about ‘next year’, so it looks like there will be another camp in 2010. |
|||||||||||||||||||
|
Notes for you to consider: |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||
|
Not having them sleep over has several advantages: (1) we have to clean up the house and sometimes the yard, and we have to get ready for the next day. (2) We also needed some quiet time and time for us to just wind down. I print a daily program (on our computer) which I give to each one every day at breakfast. They keep it with them and referred to it often. When they ask what an activity or craft is, we say they will have to wait and see. And when they ask about the next day, we tell them they will have to wait until then to find out. |
||||||||||||||||||||
 Planning ahead of time (up to 3 months or more) enables us to find "buy one, get one free" coupons at craft stores and some of the places we visit. Some of our activities cost money and we went out to eat several times–once for breakfast and once for lunch. If you are on a budget, these are not cheap things to do! |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
 |
Several weeks after the camp I send the children a simple evaluation form to fill out with questions like: I liked best ... I want to do again ... My favorite thing ... I did not like ... and let’s not do this again. Their answers were almost unanimous. Their favorite things were climbing the rocks, going to the cave and making the bull whips and putting on the frozen t-shirts. There was nothing they didn’t like. Would we do it again? We already have ideas and a folder started for next year’s camp. June can’t get here too soon!!! See you at CAMP... |
 |
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
P.S. For Christmas, each child gets a photo album with all their pictures–approximately 100 pictures per child this year. Without exception, they sit and look at each picture and the rest of the gifts are forgotten! |  |
||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
. . . . . . . . |
|||||||||||||||||||
|
2008 photos
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
| . | . | . | ||||||||||||||||||
~Liberty~ |
||||||||||||||||||||
With a little searching you can find many places to go that don’t cost money. Eating at home or packing lunches definitely is cheaper. I asked one of our daughters to pack the picnic lunches. That certainly was a much better lunch than I would have packed!! We cooked one lunch outside on a fire that the boys helped make. We fried eggs on foil, roasted hotdogs, marshmallows and bread on a stick. This is a favorite activity that we do every year.
..
.gif)
.
