One Weekend.

We had the busiest weekend ever. Friday was graduation day for the Princess. It was lovely. 120 kinder grads sang "You Raise Me Up" nice and loud. Sarah marched up, shook hands with the principal, received her diploma from her teacher and it was done.

She is now a graduate.

When the ceremony concluded the principal announced that these little people were the 8th grade grads of 2015, the high school grads of 2019, and the college grads of 2023. That brought me to the verge of tears.

I stayed at school with Emily, through the pizza party in her class and the last day of school fanfare. I have not spent even a minute in either girls' classroom this year. With littler ones at home and no real options for childcare during the day, I didn't even attempt it and I have no guilt. I did what I had to do. When Emily was in lower grades I tried to be there as often as I could. Tony would sometimes come home during the day for a late extended lunch so I could be at the school. His schedule is tighter now and it's not really an option anymore. When Eva starts school in three more years...we'll see.

A few hours later we were off to the mountains. When we arrived at the campground and began to see other campers, Emily said this:

"Ooooh, look at those tents in the middle of those trees...how scary!"

It's funny to wonder what her expectations must have been. Emily and I went to the exact same area for Girl Scout camp last October and stayed in a cabin with 16 other scouts and scout Mom's. We gave the tent to Tony for father's day last year and have only used it one other time in our backyard.

We got in to our campsite around 6:00 p.m. and luck was definitely on our side. Young James, a Boy Scout from the site beside us came over, asked permission to enter our site and then offered his assistance in setting up our tent. Whoa, Boy Scouts to the rescue! How cool is that? There were several groups of them surrounding us!

The rest of the trip went like this: eat, make a fire, make smores, sleep, make breakfast, walk around, make lunch, go swimming, eat, make a fire, make smores, walk to the outdoor amphitheater where the seating faces the lake (so cool), watch Shrek 3, sleep, make breakfast, pack up, go home. Other than the noisy neighbors the first night, it being a tad colder than I expected (around 40 at night, but we all have extra warm sleeping bags so we stayed toasty) and me forgetting to pack Eva's other shoe, it went smoothly. I think we'll do it again.

From Pinecrest June 2007

We arrived home Sunday just in time for the Girl Scout bridging ceremony. Sarah is no longer a Daisy, she's a Brownie now. Em is now a Junior Girl Scout.

After that I took the girls home and did 196 loads of laundry and went to bed.