Scenes of Summer 2010: Church Camp Part 1-Fire and Water
(Have been lax on the blogging this summer, and want to record some of these memories. "Scenes of Summer 2010" is kind of my own personal catch-up series.)
The June weekend post-birthday of this summer, we were off to camp. Nora, my mom and I all went to "preschool family camp weekend" at the camp in northern Minnesota owned by my church. (DH has to work most weekends during the summer, and also, I really can't see him sleeping in a bunk bed in a cabin.)
We had a cabin for our family unit, and, since the cabins are used for youth campers during the week, there were enough beds and bedrooms that we each ended up with our own bedroom. The thing we forgot when packing (there's always something) was Nora's sleeping bag, so she ended up borrowing Grandma's sleeping bag to use on her bunk, while Grandma used blankets. I also was reminded that I need to get a travel nightlight. I had to go comfort a little person at 3:30 a.m. the first night when the solar lantern she'd received as a birthday present burned out in her bedroom; the next night, we left the curtains open and I showed her how she could follow the support leg of the bed with her hand down to where we'd put her flashlight if she needed it -- which was quite exciting.
She had, of course, when originally told we were going to camp, associated it with camping, i.e., "tent." When she was informed that we would be sleeping in a cabin rather than a tent, I got the question, heavily tinged with tones of suspicion, "Are we gonna put marshmallows on a stick?"
We did. Although the camp provided fixings for s'mores at the "formal campfire" on Saturday night, I also packed our own stash of graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallows, because promising marshmallow roasting and then delaying it once you've arrived at camp is just not fair nor easily understood by newly minted four-year-olds. Not, evidently, that she actually cares for s'mores. She will eat the components separately but, when it comes to roasting, she prefers her marshmallows solo -- and lightly toasted, to a somewhat gooey consistency but so that they maintain their mostly white coloring. (Her grandma likes them burnt to a crisp. I prefer a golden edge to mine -- which I like to eat in s'mores.)
The campfire ring was right outside our cabin, so we got plenty of marshmallow roasting done on both formal and informal campfire nights. (Formal campfire apparently meant the camp staff attended and held up sheets of paper that actually had the lyrics to the songs no one had known how to sing the previous night.) The pastor-on-duty for the camp weekend played guitar for songs around the campfire both nights, including "Pharaoh Pharaoah," a song sung to the tune of "Louie Louie" that apparently has an interesting history: http://louielouieweb.tripod.com/pharaoh.htm. From the descriptions of how many different versions of the songs there are on that website, I suspect my mom is correct in her assertion that the chorus we were taught: "Pharoah, Pharoah/Oh, baby, let my people go/Uffda!/Ya, sure, you betcha" (and which my kid is still singing around the house) "has got to be a Minnesota invention."
Also relatively close to our cabin was the camp beachfront. We were at camp from Friday evening until shortly after noon on Sunday. Nora was on the beach/in the water *at least* six times in that timeframe. Possibly more. She and I did some in-the-lake rock throwing (I used to be able to skip stones, but then again, I used to be able to find flat ones) late Sunday morning, while very-kind Grandma was packing/cleaning up the cabin and on the day it finally warmed up, but most of the weekend was too chilly for anyone over the age of, say, five, to actually want to be in the lake water. This did not deter Nora. Luckily, most of her lake-going was gathering water supplies in her bucket for sand creations. (However, there was a *lot* of this water gathering.)
She had received some new sand toys for her birthday and brought some of them along. One set consists of an "ice cream bucket" with two plastic "cones," shovels shaped like seahorses, and a shaker with removable lid. I suspect this was the inspiration for the many flavors of sand/water creations pretend ice cream she offered me, including "seahorse blueberry." (Evidently, my fake food poisoning reaction to that one was so entertaining, it has been requested at later times we've played together.) She also made, she informed me, "sand/water soup," which she stirred with a shovel, because Daddy stirs it when he makes soup. The shaker and its lid made a fine container for the rock and little tiny snail shells she brought home. The sieve that went with the other set of birthday sand toys proved confounding to the almost-two-year-old from another family who was also attending camp. She would try to put water in it, and would get very mad that it wouldn't stay in there.
The June weekend post-birthday of this summer, we were off to camp. Nora, my mom and I all went to "preschool family camp weekend" at the camp in northern Minnesota owned by my church. (DH has to work most weekends during the summer, and also, I really can't see him sleeping in a bunk bed in a cabin.)
We had a cabin for our family unit, and, since the cabins are used for youth campers during the week, there were enough beds and bedrooms that we each ended up with our own bedroom. The thing we forgot when packing (there's always something) was Nora's sleeping bag, so she ended up borrowing Grandma's sleeping bag to use on her bunk, while Grandma used blankets. I also was reminded that I need to get a travel nightlight. I had to go comfort a little person at 3:30 a.m. the first night when the solar lantern she'd received as a birthday present burned out in her bedroom; the next night, we left the curtains open and I showed her how she could follow the support leg of the bed with her hand down to where we'd put her flashlight if she needed it -- which was quite exciting.
She had, of course, when originally told we were going to camp, associated it with camping, i.e., "tent." When she was informed that we would be sleeping in a cabin rather than a tent, I got the question, heavily tinged with tones of suspicion, "Are we gonna put marshmallows on a stick?"
We did. Although the camp provided fixings for s'mores at the "formal campfire" on Saturday night, I also packed our own stash of graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallows, because promising marshmallow roasting and then delaying it once you've arrived at camp is just not fair nor easily understood by newly minted four-year-olds. Not, evidently, that she actually cares for s'mores. She will eat the components separately but, when it comes to roasting, she prefers her marshmallows solo -- and lightly toasted, to a somewhat gooey consistency but so that they maintain their mostly white coloring. (Her grandma likes them burnt to a crisp. I prefer a golden edge to mine -- which I like to eat in s'mores.)
The campfire ring was right outside our cabin, so we got plenty of marshmallow roasting done on both formal and informal campfire nights. (Formal campfire apparently meant the camp staff attended and held up sheets of paper that actually had the lyrics to the songs no one had known how to sing the previous night.) The pastor-on-duty for the camp weekend played guitar for songs around the campfire both nights, including "Pharaoh Pharaoah," a song sung to the tune of "Louie Louie" that apparently has an interesting history: http://louielouieweb.tripod.com/pharaoh.htm. From the descriptions of how many different versions of the songs there are on that website, I suspect my mom is correct in her assertion that the chorus we were taught: "Pharoah, Pharoah/Oh, baby, let my people go/Uffda!/Ya, sure, you betcha" (and which my kid is still singing around the house) "has got to be a Minnesota invention."
Also relatively close to our cabin was the camp beachfront. We were at camp from Friday evening until shortly after noon on Sunday. Nora was on the beach/in the water *at least* six times in that timeframe. Possibly more. She and I did some in-the-lake rock throwing (I used to be able to skip stones, but then again, I used to be able to find flat ones) late Sunday morning, while very-kind Grandma was packing/cleaning up the cabin and on the day it finally warmed up, but most of the weekend was too chilly for anyone over the age of, say, five, to actually want to be in the lake water. This did not deter Nora. Luckily, most of her lake-going was gathering water supplies in her bucket for sand creations. (However, there was a *lot* of this water gathering.)
She had received some new sand toys for her birthday and brought some of them along. One set consists of an "ice cream bucket" with two plastic "cones," shovels shaped like seahorses, and a shaker with removable lid. I suspect this was the inspiration for the many flavors of sand/water creations pretend ice cream she offered me, including "seahorse blueberry." (Evidently, my fake food poisoning reaction to that one was so entertaining, it has been requested at later times we've played together.) She also made, she informed me, "sand/water soup," which she stirred with a shovel, because Daddy stirs it when he makes soup. The shaker and its lid made a fine container for the rock and little tiny snail shells she brought home. The sieve that went with the other set of birthday sand toys proved confounding to the almost-two-year-old from another family who was also attending camp. She would try to put water in it, and would get very mad that it wouldn't stay in there.