Camp, Pools, and ... How old am I?

According to Wikipedia June 1st is the 152nd day of the year (153rd in leap years). On June 1, 1792 Kentucky was admitted as the 15th state of the United States of America. Morgan Freeman was born June 1, 1937. And in Cambodia, June 1st is National Tree planting Day. The significance of these events pale in comparison to the fact that tomorrow, June 1, 2010 my 12 year old daughter gets to go to her first girls camp!

Wow, am I really old enough to have a 12 year old daughter? It seems like not too long ago I was on my way to the hospital to have my first baby. Even more recently, we were taking her picture on the front steps before her first day of kindergarten. And now tonight she is getting the last of her things packed so that she can go to camp. Where have the last 12 years gone?

I loved going to camp when I was a teenager, although that seems like forever ago. As we have been getting her ready to go this last week I have been remembering all the fun things that happen at camp. The freezing cold mornings, the pranks we played on each other, keeping our leaders up all night with our giggling, and the silly songs we sang around the camp fire. I remember one year, a group of us went for a walk to the river. I had never seen a river as wide as this one. There were huge rocks along the bank, and the water wasn’t moving too fast, so we had the idea to set the rocks up in the water to make a small pool. Now keep in mind that “back in the day”, camp wasn’t like it was now where there are bunks and showers. We roughed it in tents and didn’t shower for the week. Being only 13 and the geniuses we thought we were, we decided to use that little pool as a bath and wash our hair. Soon the rest of the girls heard about our grand idea; it wasn’t long before all the girls and the leaders were playing in the river waiting for their turn to wash their hair. The water was freezing but well worth it.

I’m sure Sara will come home this weekend singing the same songs and talking about how much fun she had. Although I would be surprised if she made a pool to wash her hair in, as of last week the camp still had two feet of snow!