Day 1: Rain, rain, go away

Even though it went well, I would have to categorize last week's adventure as kind of a warm up. After all, it was just a day and a half, and the boys were still buzzing with the excitement that comes with the end of the school year...full of their own ideas about summer vacation.

So today I planned to really hit the ground running. Playing outside, maybe eat lunch on the patio, and then head to the pool for a relaxing afternoon.

But…. then the rains came. So our plans were washed out. You would have thought that I’d be ready for that…. but as the sole counselor here at Camp Daddy, Maryland, I am not quite that organized yet. It’s not like the boys need a big pep talk to stay home and play Legos, especially on a rainy day.

So after breakfast the boys happily bounded off, ready for a day of playing.

Approximately 1.2 seconds later, they began fighting. Exactly what precipitated it may never be known…but what followed was a series of three-way negotiations over who had which Star Wars characters, light saber blade colors, and, a very specific Lego window piece. I am sure that it would have made the Middle East peace process seem simple by comparison. In fact, I am thinking of adding a hostage negotiator to the full time staff here at Camp Daddy.

On the plus side, the boys happily took a break from playing for some reading time, and both Dylan and Ethan took a turn reading to Noah.

And, there was laundry to be done. It’s not like I’ve never done the laundry in our house before but maybe I never tried to do it all at once. My lord!! Where did all of these dirty clothes come from?? I mean, what the ----?! How do three small boys make so much laundry? At one point, I actually called Grace to ask how many children we had. Seriously. I thought maybe she was adding laundry from the neighbors or something.

Four loads later, the laundry was done. The boys were actually a big help there. I folded and they put their clothes into their drawers. And I may have started to see why there’s so much laundry. There were at least a couple of items that no one seems to wear. One troublesome shirt in particular, seemed to belong to no one. Dylan swore it was too small for him, Ethan said he couldn’t ever remember wearing it, and Noah swore that Ethan wore it yesterday.

Because I am a goal oriented person, I could not just leave the shirt homeless. I circled back to Dylan, who thought maybe he wore it a year ago. Obviously we do laundry more often than annually, so that was not a useful clue. I then tried to sneak the homeless garment into Ethan’s drawer – ten seconds later I found him stealthily returning it to the unfolded pile.

At that point, what am I supposed to do? Right? So I put it in Grace’s drawer. Eventually she’ll find it and she will know exactly where it belongs. Problem solved!

Topped off the day with shrimp and scallops, and peach cobbler for dessert. Now I’d call THAT a successful day at Camp Daddy!