Grace went to Camp Lakewood last week with our church for the first time.  This camp is for kids going into 3rd-5th grade.  She was one of the youngest and I swear she was the smallest.  She was “excited and nervous” about leaving us for 5 days (and even bigger, 5 nights!), but decided she would do it.  We went shopping for everything she would need, bought fun things to make it even more exciting and special, and didn’t talk about it too much if we saw the nervous part gaining a grip on the excited part.

We drove her up on Sunday afternoon, where we immediately saw many, many people from our church that knew her name.  That made everyone feel better.  Well maybe just me and Grace, but everyone that was feeling nervous.  I was nervous that she would be too sad and wouldn’t be able to handle it.  Grace’s emotions are BIG.  Bigger than she is sometimes.  Bigger than she knows how to deal with.  Heck, bigger than I know how to deal with (that’s when we call Aunt Heather, she always knows how to help).  She really has come a long way with this, but camp was going to stretch that.  A lot.  I talked to the camp director, her cabin counselor, other moms who had gone before… I was worried about her.

I’m getting off track.  Many people knew her name.  It was amazing.  We saw one of her cabin counselors, Caroline,  right away and Grace was super excited.  Caroline babysits on Tuesdays in the summer, so they already have a relationship.  Perfect!  We got her signed in and all settled.  We went down the hill, they yelled her name, and she was off.  She was good.  She didn’t look back.  And exhale.  There were no tears or really long hugs.  Maybe this would work!

Camp posts pictures on Facebook and Flickr all week long (from moms everywhere, Thank you!), so I got to see every night what she was doing, and that she was having fun!  I got a few texts throughout the week that she was doing great.  Awesome!  Then when we picked her up Friday she was grinning ear to ear and her dimples were so deep they could collect water.  She sang and danced her little heart out at worship time, and was SO thankful to sit in the car and turn on the air conditioning on the way home.  She shared story after story, about tubing, the blob, messy games, the big swing, how the zip line was too scary so she didn’t try it, the silly boys (including the one boy counselor who talks like Elmo)… she loved it.  Oh, and there was this lovely story about her experience on the big swing:  When I was on the big swing, I threw up in my mouth a little bit, but not out of my mouth.  I had a napkin in my pocket so I just, you know, spit it in there and put it back in my pocket.  The girl who sleeps on my bottom bunk had pixy stix so I ate some of those to get the taste out of my mouth.  Sounds like a good 8-year-old remedy for an upset stomach, right?

So she’s good.  She was happy and tired and tan and covered in rash that cleared up quickly.  Her stories made Eli very eager to go next year.

Oh wait, one more thing.  The day AFTER she got home from camp I got this card in the mail: