The innermost thoughts of a very private person...: Mahaffey Camp 2008

We are so glad to be home from camp. We were there last week from Monday to Saturday. It's always fun to see, generally, the same people year after year. Since Dan and I have been working with the kids for the past eight years, we get to see them grow up. It seems to happen so fast! We also got to see a friend of ours who has a 3 1/2-year-old daughter and 11-week-old twin girls. They DROVE from Florida. She said she just couldn't miss a year of Mahaffey! I'm officially declaring her Mom of the Year.

We were surprised to find out that two couples close to our age are going through some difficult times. One couple's divorce will be final in a few months. The other couple is separated as of about a month ago. I got to spend a lot of time with their daughter who's going into 8th grade (yes, they had her very young which I'm sure created some complications in their relationship). Their daughter is so sweet and smart. Anyway, we had a lot of time to talk about the situation.

Probably the biggest challenge of the week was our family's sleeping arrangements. We borrowed Vern and Lorrie's rv because it is air conditioned! (at least it was, until the air conditioner broke on Friday). The best part about the rv was having our OWN BATHROOM! (If you've ever been to Mahaffey, you know this is a very big deal).

In the rv there are three double beds in the rv and nowhere to put the Sam's pack-n-play. Dan and I slept on separate beds because Dan calls me a bed hog even when we're sleeping in out king bed at home. We really don't like sharing beds with our kids because we just don't sleep well when we do that, so we divided the one bed in half with the creative use of a bed rail, and put Sam on one half and Isaiah on the other. It seemed like a good idea, but Sam could easily crawl over the bed rail, so getting him to sleep was almost impossible. Friday night was the first night they both slept a normal amount (8:15 or so until 7:00 a.m.) Every night before that, one of them was up til 10 or so. On Thursday night Samuel woke up at 1am, 5am, and 6am. That morning I almost packed it all up and came home.

I overheard a supervisor in the dining hall saying the one of her workers was leaving because her kids had become "unmanageable." I could relate to that woman, because with the lack of sleep, Isaiah and Sam's manageability went WAY down, as did my ability to manage them. Ha!

By Friday, we would be walking to the dining hall or somewhere else at camp, and Isaiah would just sit down on the sidewalk and suck his thumb. He was just plain exhausted!

We survived and have only one more episode of traveling planned. A college friend near Harrisburg, PA is having a mini-reunion, so we're headed out there this Friday and Saturday. Last night I figured out that we have been away 4 out of the last 8 weeks. After this weekend, we're ready to stay put for a while.