How exciting — Katie was finally old enough to come along to the Girl Scout Mom & Me weekend at Camp Robbinswold.
I had a moment of bitter confusion when I realized that we hadn’t been to a Mom & Me since 2015. Three years! (There wasn’t a Mom & Me in 2016, and then 2017 was the year I Over-Camped myself and I couldn’t handle the idea of yet one more camping trip.)
Full disclosure: this was Princess Camping. We were in a winterized unit with flush toilets and showers. Meals were served in the lodge.
But that’s not the point. The point is having fun one-on-on(ish) time with my girls. And eating lots of gorp.
The theme of the weekend was “Out of This World,” so there were lots of educational and art activities about astronomy. Katie was delighted to make a “solar system” beaded necklace. I loved learning how to use sightlines and geometry to calculate how high the sun is in the sky (er . . . it was overcast, so we used the same technique to estimate the height of a tree).
Saturday afternoon was spent making tie-dye shirts and painting rocks and mini canvases. Eleanor made a rather pretty landscape picture of the Hood Canal (where Robbinswold is located).
We also took a nice long walk along the shore, just the three of us. No sea otter sightings, but we did get to see the cabins where Eleanor stayed this summer at camp.
In the evening we had a guest speaker: a former NASA astronaut who told us all about what life was like on the International Space Station. Unfortunately, the clouds came in right before her talk so we couldn’t use her big telescope.
Bummer — but it did make for a spectacular moonrise. Katie was especially charmed by how beautiful it looked. It made for a great background for the all-camp sing-a-long. I’m such a sucker for camp songs, love ’em.
Our unit was shared with another group of moms and girls who were all Katie’s age. We had fun hanging out together in the evening, talking and playing games. The little girls made blanket forts in the middle of the common area. I spent time knitting my Cthulu dice bag for Jeff (more to come on that later), at which the other moms nodded politely (if they were non-geeks) or declared “the coolest thing ever your son is so lucky” (if they were geek geeks).
On Sunday morning we all worked together to tidy up the camp (lots of floor mopping and table wiping) then we gathered to trade SWAPS.
A SWAP = Some Whatchamacallit Affectionately Pinned. It’s a Girl Scout thing where people make little trinkets on safety pins to trade. Lots of good fun.
We were missing our Grandma on this trip (she’s come with us in the past) so we re-created some of the pictures Eleanor had done with her.
It was a little sad to say goodbye and come home, but we were very tired out (both girls fell asleep on the drive back) and more than happy to say hello to our comfy mattresses Sunday evening.
Can’t wait to go again next year!
Casa Camisas 