...I did, after all, spend the weekend at Winter Camp with a bunch of Cub Scouts, some of which did not have their mothers present. I was happy to "adopt" any boy who was missing his mother (and there were a few) and fill that spot in their heart temporarily. I won't go into boring details about the lodge with the "rustic charm" or the "cozy" loft sleeping arrangements (substitute "run down" and "cramped" for the previous words). I won't tell you about 20-something boys and their strange sleeping habits, their dads with their snoring, their sisters with their night terrors, or their mother's with their territorial issues.
I will tell you that by the time we left (early) on Saturday, the boys respected me and listened to my requests and the parents appreciated my ability to direct a bunch of crazy boys into lying in their beds quietly (even though they were not sleeping). I guess being obviously hugely pregnant gave me special powers. I didn't have to carry a single box (although I did load my own van when we packed), cook a single meal, wash a single dish, or fetch a single beverage. I was pampered by Scouts and parents alike!
So now we come to the dumb boy part... enjoy our sledding pictures!
IJ is getting hard to photograph
He likes to hide from the camera
But he loves the snow and had a great time playing snow ball fights, sledding, and falling into tree wells.
S doesn't like the cold as much
But he had fun sledding
"Hey, watch this! Look what I can do!"
He did this more than once...
...and had to be pushed back to the van in the sled after he crashed into a tree (for the second time). We thought he had a concussion and a broken nose, but he just had a scrape and needed some lunch and a nap. He is just fine now. But he informed me that he was "never ever ever going back to a mountain ever again as long as he lives." And he told the Webelos leaders that he "was going to just ignore him if he kept asking him what his name was."
All in all, we had a great time (I left M and the girls at home). I'm glad we had the chance to go try out Winter Camp with a group of people we didn't know very well. And I'm super glad we left a day early so I could get a good night's sleep in my own bed with just my own children waking me up all night long! And I'm thinking that next year we will try again...and bring the whole crew!
