- Farts, poop, pee, bums and penis talk is absolutely hilarious. One day I said to him, “Do you want a peanut butter and jam sand which”. He starts laughing and says, “You said pee and nuts.” I have heard this before but it never gets old. I’ve tried to teach him when it’s appropriate to talk like that. His dad used to say that kind of talk is for the playground. You can talk to your buddies like that because they will also think it’s funny but girls don’t like that kind of stuff; they just think it’s gross.
- Boys make friends easier than girls, at least from my perspective. I mean I didn’t make one single friend camping and he made multiple. This might be because I didn’t try but he would just walk right up to any boy and ask if they wanted to play and just like that off they went for hours riding bikes and playing at the park. I think it’s great to have such amazing friendships that start and end in less than a week. How grateful should we be to have these experiences?
- A boy can survive on hot dogs, chips, smores and the odd bottle of water. He didn’t care what he ate as long as he could eat it in less than two minutes because his friend was waiting for him. On our last camping trip I tried to cook some proper meals and this time I just tried to shove stuff in while he was running away. I am not sure if he ate a vegetable or a fruit the whole week but he survived and I had way less to do so in the end it worked out perfectly.
- Kids can survive without electronics. We did take his iPad but with no power hook ups he was only allowed to use it for about 20 min in the evening right before sleep because there was no way to recharge it. Funny thing was that after the first day he hardly used it at all and only asked for it a few times. He preferred playing games and riding bikes with all his new friends. When he would come back to the camp he wanted to play Uno and war or play with bubbles. I think he was also happy to get away from the noise of life. No T.V., game systems or Netflix but there was always music playing in the background.
- Showering is over rated. I mean he was exfoliating daily at the beach and rinsing off in the lake. I am pretty sure that counts as getting cleaned up. Doesn’t it? He did that every day but I am pretty sure I forgot to shower him except that one time on day 5 when I thought to myself that I should maybe clean him once with soap.
- You can make some pretty good cash by painting and selling rocks. The rocks are free and paint is cheap. It’s a good business and people like mini sales men. The prices ranged from ten cents to a dollar. During this trip I have added about 25 rocks to my personal collection.
- Glow sticks and finger lights can keep a little boy entertained for hours in the evening. It reminded me how when given the chance children imagination can take them anywhere they want to go. He was a ninja, astronaut, and a soldier. He played freeze tag and star wars. At least I think he was playing star wars because there was a lot of shooting going on and no one was getting hit.
- He’s my hero and can’t wait to be bigger than me. He is always comparing our height, hands and of course our muscles. I hear “Look mom” multiple times a day showing me his punches and his kicks. The spinning back kick definitely deserves a mention because it’s pretty impressive. When he was little I would always tell him he was my hero because his love really helped me when I was very sad after his dad died. Of course I received a ton of support from everyone, my big kids included but me and Kase were always together and his presence is what honestly kept me from totally losing it. On this trip I learned he takes that role pretty seriously. We were walking to the lake and he says to me, “If a bear jumps out right now I’ll fight him and u run away.”
- I learned that he wants to be an inventor. Every evening once it got dark enough we would put a few of those magic fire packets into the fire and watch the flames turn colors. He asked me one day how it was made. So I explained that there are chemicals in the package that burn different colors when they are on fire then wood does. He said “Someone must have invented that. I want to be an inventor.” He continued to talk to me for the next hour about the things he wanted to invent. I said to him that it sounded like he thought about it a lot and he says “See a need fill a need. That’s what they say in the Robots movie mom”.
- I learned that I really am his favorite person. A few of the evenings I would wait until the campground got very dark and quiet and we would go lay on a blanket out in the field with some glow sticks and flashlights. The skies were clear the week we were gone and so the moon and the stars were very bright. We would try and find shapes in the stars and we talked about what it would be like to walk on the moon. And then we seen a shooting star and we made wishes. Mine was that we go camping together every year because it’s so fun. And his was that he could have two of me because he loves me so much.
