Mr. Sneaky Pants Goes to Camp

On Father’s Day, the day after we got home from North Dakota, I hurriedly ran Mr. SP’s clothes through the laundry and we packed another suitcase, gathered up a sleeping bag, and I dropped him off at Covenant Park Bible camp.  Luckily for me, it’s not too far away.  On both the trip to drop him off and pick him up from camp, it was just the two of us in the car, which is always fun, because Mr. SP is great when you get to spend time with him one on one.  I always find out lots of interesting things and we get to have neat conversations.

We arrived at camp and zipped right through the registration line.  We carried his suitcase and sleeping bag and pillow to Cabin 7, which was the exact same building he was in last year.  He “humored” me for one quick picture, and then he was happily  off.  “See ya, Mom!”  There were a lot of other kids from our church at camp, and their parents were hanging around making sure all was well before leaving.  But, I didn’t see any reason to stick around because he was off doing fun stuff within seconds.  So I left.

It might seem like a little thing, sometimes, and I often take it for granted:  my kids are super easy to drop off at camp.  Really, it’s great.  I’m happy they are confident enough to comfortably experience new things without me.  I love that they might miss home a little, but not much, and they rarely seem to get homesick.

Mr. Sneaky Pants had a terrific week at camp.  We wrote him lots and lots of letters because whenever you get multiple pieces of mail at mail call, you have to sing or tell jokes.  One day he got ten letters from us at once.  I enlisted the help of some neighborhood kids, who were thrilled to write letters when they heard about the prospect of their mail inducing a spontaneous public performance.

I picked Mr. SP up a few days later, and he chattered 3/4 the way home, until he spontaneously fell fast asleep in the car.  I loved it.  His very favorite part was “improv time” where he got to be dramatic.  (It fits, I guess, because he’s a dramatic kid).   He was home just two days, long enough for me to wash his laundry again, before we packed up and I drove him to North Dakota to spend 10 days with Grandma Kathy at Trailride.  Since he spent the week before we traveled to North Dakota, this kid has barely been home , just a handful of days really, for more than a month.