I have been all out of whack the last few weeks. Irritated at people much sooner than I usually am. Snapping at Jon. Sighing loudly as I wait for the person ahead of me at the grocery to load their items on the cart. 

Why this irritability?

Because my babies have been away at camp. The earth is off its axis, or so it feels. I’m used to coming home and seeing their smiles, hearing their stories, watching them wrestle.  It has been non-stop camp time this July with Ri going to Eco Chic Girl Scout camp for 6 days, Mario going to Boy Scout camp for one week, and Ri going to Camp Akita for 5 days. 

Ri was less than thrilled with Eco Chic. She was in good spirits upon her return and didn’t complain about it until I started digging. Then she divulged that it was super dirty and they didn’t do much and they had way too much down time. The biggest issue was the cleanliness – and my girl is not one to really care to much about that so it must have been gross. But she did meet new friends and got girls’ phone numbers and emails. And she said there were some fun times during the trip like swimming and getting manicures. 

She also thought it was cool to stay in a yurt. I thought that was cool, too. I lost the mom of the year award by not writing her a letter during her stay. Everyone else got letters from their moms and family during the trip. I felt really bad about that one so I made sure I wrote her one for her Camp Akita stay (watch, no one will have letters on this camping trip and she will be embarrassed that I sent one – never fails). 

All the parents talk about how much their kids love Akita so I’m hopeful Ri comes back loving this experience. And she was placed in a cabin with seven of her other girlfriends so she was happy about that. Can you tell?!

Mario was not overly thrilled with day camp for Boy Scouts. None of his other scout friends went this year and Jon and I decided to drop him off and not stay with him this year (last year a parent had to be there). We knew it was going to be a crapshoot as to whether he’d take to it or not. He’s much more a homebody than Ri. And sure enough, he asked to stay home on Wednesday and Thursday rather than go to camp. We let him. But he did go on Friday to finish up the week. The good parents that we are did not realize that it was only a half day on Friday so I went to pick him up at noon (Jon had dropped him off and picked him up each day and Mario LOVED that). I searched for Mario when I arrived – not finding him amidst the mass of kids. But then he popped up before my eyes and grabbed my hand. 

“Mom, let’s go fishing!”

It was free time in the afternoon and that’s all he wanted to do. He caught two fish within ten minutes. As we were waiting on number two, I commented that I liked fishing because it was relaxing.

“Mom, it is not relaxing! You have to be pumped up and ready to pull that fish in if it gets your line. You gotta be alert. It is far from relaxing!”

Well, ok then. He told me.

Unfortunately, all the other kids wanted to fish, too so we had to give up our pole after 20 minutes. But Mario was ok with it (so happy he caught two right out of the gate). We tried archery but the line was long. So he introduced me to ga-ga ball. It’s like gladiators but with a rubber ball. These boys were brutal in the wooden ring trying to take each others’ legs out with the ball. Mario loved it.

  
So here I sit on a Friday night with my hubby. We had a delicious La Tavola dinner together and hit up Kroger’s for some groceries afterwards. Then we came home to an empty house. Should we play cards? Watch a movie? We are paralyzed with the strangeness of no kids in the house. 

But we still have the Rocco-man. 

Walk time.