We had a super early morning today!  Last night dh and I talked about wanting to take the family to Gettysburg today, then at ds8’s violin recital we found out about the possible camp option for dd that began just yesterday, and then we got home at 10 pm to start putting our plans in place for this morning. Whew!

I originally thought I’d take dd14 early in the morning to sign her up for camp, then head back home to pick up everyone else, and then we’d all head to Gettysburg.  But then I realized that her camp in a half hour away, on the way to Gettysburg – so it didn’t make sense to spend an extra 1.5 hours driving if we could avoid that by all being ready early enough to take dd and go directly to Gettysburg from there.  So that’s what we did.

We packed milk and instant oatmeal for the kids to have for breakfast once we got to the camp – there was boiling water available and they ate while I made arrangements with the camp director.  We talked about different options to finance camp, and though they offered to let me pay half the fee for the overnight option over time, I wasn’t comfortable going into debt for a luxury.  Instead, we decided to send dd for the day option, which cuts the cost by 50% and gives her almost every aspect of camp except for pillow fights after lights out, lol!  Dd has agreed to pay for part of the cost herself, something we’ve asked our oldest two children to do in the past – I think it shows a lot when something is important enough to a child that they’ll pay a significant amount of money towards it.  It also helps them appreciate the experience more.

There there are five other families who are doing the same thing so an evening carpool is already in place for a couple of evenings (some have a big enough vehicle to accommodate an additional person, some don’t).  The voice teacher has a large van and takes girls in with her in the morning (since she teaches first thing in the morning), so I only have to get dd to her house by 8:10 am.   So the driving is mostly taken care of – isn’t that incredible?!  The girls get there in time for breakfast and get picked up around 9:30 or 10 pm.  A very full day for her, and it will still allow us to see dd every evening and morning.

Dd came home really, really excited about the camp.  Her current experience is already different in every way from her past experience at a residential camp (the same one that dd15 loves, but they have very different feelings about it).   This program is called Tizmoret Shoshana, an expressive arts camp for Orthodox girls.  There are girls from different parts of the country who are attending, in addition to the large local contingent, but it’s not a large camp – under 40 girls total.

Dd likes drama and dance, both things that she doesn’t currently have much opportunity to develop (she can’t participate in school based activities since she’s not in school, and though there are homeschool activities that are available to the general community, they aren’t suitable for her for religious reasons), so this is a wonderful opportunity for her.  She’s chosen drama as her major, art for her minor, and there is daily dance for girls in all tracks.  I think she also said something about being in a choir. That’s in addition to a daily Torah lecture, outdoor activity, and evening speaker or activity.

Some of the things she likes about the camp, in addition to the wonderful activities: she really appreciates the flexible schedule that allows for personal freedom and decision making.  I give my kids a good amount of autonomy, and it was hard for dd in the past to be told she couldn’t do anything or go anywhere within the camp grounds without express permission (eg to visit her older sister at a bunk five minutes away during free time), or to be highly controlled by others (eg being directed during clean up time to clean up the mess of the other girls after she tidied her own things in just a few minutes – she quickly learned that responsibility was punished and laziness rewarded).  She’s highly organized and responsible, and appreciates being treated like a person capable of good decisions, and therefore dislikes micromanagement.  There isn’t an insistence on girls participating in activities regardless of interest (something that is typical of most camps – dd hated being told she had to play a certain sport when she didn’t enjoy it and would rather sit and watch), which she very much appreciated – even though she wanted to participate in all the activities!  I think this kind of atmosphere is particularly well suited to home educated children, who are used to managing their own time appropriately.  Dd commented that the girls all seem very happy to be there and highly motivated so they get a lot done.

She said the girls were very friendly, the counselors were warm, the activities were fun, and the food was great! (The camp is hosted at a retreat center, and the food is hotel quality – I was almost drooling when I saw what they had for breakfast! Not your typical camp fare at all!)

Though it’s not related to camp, I’ll share a fun side note about our day after we dropped dd at camp.  While we were at the visitor center at Gettysburg (we were there for several hours), we saw two other Orthodox families there.  And we suprisingly enough knew both of them!  One hosted us for Friday night dinner in Israel the night before my oldest was born – so it’s been 17 years since I saw them (actually, she was visiting a friend who had a baby at the same hospital/time I had my third, so I saw her for five minutes 14 years ago).  They now live in GA and were traveling through the area – they were only at the visitor center for a very short while and if we hadn’t ‘happened’ to walk in right after one another we would have missed each other completely.  (Seeing this family was a very strange experience for me since I met them as a very young couple with two young daughters; I still mentally have that picture of them.  But now the child who was then four is a mother herself and this couple have become grandparents – kind of unsettling to have people age a generation in time within a couple of minutes of meeting them again.)

The second family looked familiar but I couldn’t place them at first – turns out we met them a couple of months ago at the day long screening in NYC for the Elite Academy program!  They live in NY but were in the area because they brought one of their daughters this morning to this same camp that we are sending dd14 to – it’s amazing what a small world it is!

Discovering this camp at just the right time for dd  is to me is one more reminder that I don’t have to rely on myself to know everything and be everything for my children. There is Someone else looking after them and making sure they get what they need, sometimes in spite of their parents! (I had heard of this camp but because of the expense, never even considered considering it. :))   It’s a wonderful, warm, and supportive environment for girls who have a talent they want to develop in the expressive arts;  I’m so delighted and grateful to have discovered it at just the right time for dd!

Avivah