Day Camp

I’ve told you before that Scouting is very important in my family.  So of course I had to sign up Crafty and Scout for Day Camp. Every year our Service Unit puts on a little three-day camp that costs about 25 bucks for approximately 10 hours of activities. That’s pretty cheap babysitting! The first evening they were supposed to meet at 5:30 at a little park over by the “Oval” in Kearns. They were going ice-skating. I had the girls pack their little backpacks with a jacket, water bottle, and their swaps. 

Not our swaps.  Instructions here.

Swaps are little pins that they are supposed make themselves and “swap” with other scouts. Teach and I sweated over these all week and then we finally designed them and made them with very little help from the girls. Crafty’s were little ribbon roses hot glued to pins, and Scout’s were Christmas buttons hot glued to pins. I know it’s June, but it was actually rather appropriate since their day camp was called Holiday Hijinks. 

So we were driving over to the Oval and I asked Crafty to read me the address since it had been a while since we had been in that area. It was about that time when she noticed that they were supposed to eat dinner! Being the amazing (but forgetful) mom that I am, I pulled into the nearest Sonic and ordered them each a chicken sandwich. After about ten minutes waiting for our food, I impatiently poked the order button. 

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 “Can I help you?” some unknown voice asked. “Is our order ready yet?” I demanded. I may be forgetful, but I hate checking in late and I hadn’t planned any extra time for a stop, especially not one that took so long. About 30 seconds later, they finally delivered our order. I passed out the food and drove the last 5 minutes to the park. Of course Scout had only eaten about two bites of her sandwich. I wasn't sure that really qualified as dinner, so I told her to haul it along with us. She nibbled on it for the 20 minutes it took us to check in. 

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 Check in/check out is always a big huge hairy deal. My Service Unit Director took one look at Scout and said, “Oh, her first Day Camp!” (We’re geeks like that…) “Yeah, she’s so cute,” I commented. And she and Crafty were off with the rest of the girls just like a bunch of little scouts.  They had a plenty of fun activities all three days of the camp. On Thursday they made Easter bunny pins and tacos for Cinco de Mayo. On Friday they made snowmen kits and giant Christmas stockings. They made lots of new friends. We even managed to arrange a carpool for the second two days with a neighbor I didn’t even know had a girl in scouts. Her dad was supposed to pick everybody up from the final day. 

My girls came bouncing in the house about 7:45, singing silly Girl Scout songs and showing off their goodies. About 8:15 I got a call on my cell phone that I didn’t recognize. I punched the talk button, “Hello?” “Is this Sandy?” a strange voice asked. “Yes,” I said tentatively. “Do you have your girls?” she asked somewhat accusingly. “Which ones?” I asked, confused. I have lots of girls. “Crafty and Scout,” (although I must confess she used their real names). “Yes, they are right here,” I answered cheerfully. “Nobody checked them out!” Now if you know girl scouts like I know girls scouts, you know that this is a huge breech in protocol. 

“Oh, we have a new scout dad and I guess he didn’t know,” I answered, “Sorry.” You would think she would be relieved to know that they hadn’t lost four little girls, but instead she just seemed annoyed. “Next time, check them out!” I hung up the phone. Maybe we needed to have a shirt for dads that reads “First Day Camp." At least then they would know which dads need a lesson at check-in.