camper | Ordinary Days

It is finally the week that Anika has been anticipating for the entire summer. This is her second time being a camper, so it was much less emotional than last year, for both of us! (Good grief, she’s not going anywhere, I still see her all week, but I cried when she left for her cabin last year anyway!)

She was extremely excited, and wanted to go find her counselors at 8:30 this morning. (The other campers weren’t arriving until 10:30.) I managed to hold her off until the appropriate time.Her cousin Amber came to join Anika for the week.

Anika said she wanted to wear her “Big Sister” shirt so that everyone would know how much she missed her little sister. That sounds very sweet, but they fought all morning before she left. I’m sure they will miss each other, though. I think Kaylia will get very bored. Anika adds a lot of action and excitement to our lives!

Today is a pretty exciting day around here! Anika’s been looking forward to her first day of camp for a long time, but last night she started feeling a little nervous, and said she didn’t want to be a camper after all. But I think she started to feel a bit better about the whole thing when her cousin Amber arrived this morning. She did say to me as we were walking to her cabin that she had “butterflies in her stomach”, but getting a top bunk in her cabin was a very positive distraction!

When we saw her at lunch, she seemed to be having a great time. We took a bunch of pictures, but spent some time strategizing as to how not to look like hovering parents.

We’re not sure what she’ll like best – being in a cabin and spending time with other little girls, or getting to drink as many glasses of juice as she wants and eating candy from the Tuck Shop every day. A few days ago, she told me that she was really looking forward to being able to do whatever she wanted to do, and not having me around to “boss” her. She started listing all the things she was going to do that she’s not allowed to do at home, and then she said, “Maybe I’ll go for two weeks of camp.”

Apparently we have some work to do in the area of teaching her how to make good choices even when we’re not around.

Anyway, here’s a bunch of pictures from her first day!

When the campers arrive, the staff form an arch for the kids to run through as a way of welcoming them. Anika was grinning so hard that you could tell from a mile away just how excited she was to finally get to be the one running through the arch!