Pictures from Camp

AKD and MC were away at Boy Scout camp last week.  Special thanks to A Friendly Boy Scout for taking most of these pictures.

It's become a tradition for Troop 168 to spend part of their time at camp in the storm shelter.  What a first night welcome for these boys!  Here they are playing janitor while waiting for the all clear.

My biggest boy and my middlest boy tug-of-war-ing.  This is actually a pretty accurate picture of their relationship sometimes...

These boys set a goal to climb a mile during their week in camp.  That means 165 ascents of the climbing tower.  They did 175.

AKD and his best buddies in the foreground--waiting to climb.  Isn't it cute how they're matching?

My middlest boy earned the small boat sailing merit badge.  Best merit badge at camp, so I'm told.

Some of these boys look impossibly young.  And some of them look impossibly green.  That pink hat looks awfully familiar, though...

The middle-aged boys

 There aren't many pictures of AKD because he was off doing high adventures instead of just, you know, regular adventures, and A Friendly Boy Scout did not go along--regular adventures were plenty adventurous for her.  AKD had a great time, though.  His favorite day consisted of mountain boarding and ... well, two other things that I didn't hear because I was too busy freaking out over the fact that my son went mountain boarding.

AKD has earned just about all, if not all, of the merit badges offered at camp, so he just gets to have fun.  You can really tell he's having a lot of fun from this pic, can't you?

MC earned five merit badges: small boat sailing, emergency preparedness, first aid, geology, and cycling.

The rest of us muddled through the week at home.  We were lonely without our biggest kiddos, but we made it.

I must say, it's...challenging...cooking for three, now that I'm used to cooking for five, and I can definitely understand why persons who are used to cooking for more might have trouble suddenly cooking for less.  Especially if these persons don't really like leftovers.  I can relate to a lack of ambition to prepare meals--it hardly seems worth the effort to cook an entire meal to serve just three people, and, since Hubby was at camp for both of the bracketing weekends, I discovered it feels even less worthwhile to cook for just two.

Or not-so-suddenly cooking for fewer, I guess.  These are planned transitions, after all.  From the very beginning, We've planned for these children to live with us for only a short while.  We've planned for them to grow and learn and be independent.  As our kiddos grow and leave home, we'll be down to four, then three, then two again.

As it should be, of course.  These periodic glimpses of the future are a great reminder to enjoy the time I have with my family.  If all goes as planned, they will leave in time, but we are not guaranteed that all will go as planned.