Week One....

This is what I came out to find one summer day in 2005
when Andrew was playing with a friend...the
look on their faces says it all...

Week one of camp is finished in approximately 3 hours. It will be interesting to see just how muddy the clothes are that come home to be washed as the weather here in the Halifax area this past week was not exactly pristine and of course, my son did not take anything remotely water-proof to wear. I have learned  that to a kid, playing in the mud makes life more fun. The more dirt the bigger the smile. At Bayside Camp, they even have a mud pit the kids love to use. I am ever so thankful for the huge lake that is less than 100 metres away.  For one week, reality is suspended; being surrounded by both old and new friends, swimming, canoeing, playing games, staying up late by camp-fires all make for magical memories. Being picked up at the end of the week must feel like the world is ending. I am expecting a quiet drive home tonight. I am happy that this is not the end of camp for the summer - two more weeks of fun and mud are still to come!

Summer time.....

It is the Canada Day weekend; the sun has decided to come out, the temperature is warm and we are doing nothing.....hurray! That means school has finished, most of my work is done and our schedule is free and clear for two months. Well, not quite; beginning tomorrow Andrew starts a new adventure at Bayside Camp. He has been accepted to the CORE leadership training program. I am so excited for him as he gets to experience one week of leadership training, a week of being a junior leader and then a third week volunteering in the maintenance department. What a fantastic opportunity for a teen. Even when working hard enough at camp that you may fall asleep on the deck while waiting for supper, it is still camp - the best place ever for a kid in the summer! If you want to learn more about Bayside and give your kid one of the best summers ever then look them up at baysidecamp.org

What I did on my summer vacation....

Almost every tv show or movie I have seen that has a "first" day of school in it has a scene where the teacher assigns the dreaded, "What I did on my summer vacation". I personally don't recall ever being given that assignment but I thought I would give it a try, especially as today is my last day of summer vacation.

So....what did I do? In summers past I have travelled to England to visit family and the USA for sight-seeing and shopping. When I was quite young I even travelled to the National Ballet School and Royal Winnipeg Ballet school. More recently, I have spent a week each year at Malagash's Family Camp which has allowed my son and I to have a week free of all things normal - no cooking or cleaning for me and lots of playing and beach time for him.

This year was a little different. I didn't do anything other than school work and the odd visit to a friend's house. We had very abnormal weather this summer and so I really didn't feel like going to the ocean. I read a few books and planned what to do with my class this fall. I watched some old movies and did some card-making - really, it was no different than the school year.

My son however, had a very different summer. He stayed at his Grandma's and visited cousins from far away, joined the junior golf program at my parent's golf course, went to Fall's Lake with my Mom and other relatives where he had a week of freedom to run and swim and play with more cousins. He attended a number of day camps and even went by himself to his first week of sleep-away camp at Bayside. In the brief moments in between, I took him to the lake, to visit friends and even a wedding shower for our cousin (poor guy...I think he is too old now to drag along to those any more!). Even now, he is back to Grandma's for one last week of fun and collecting vegetables that he grew in her garden.

All in all, the summer went by quickly and now I am less than 24 hours away from beginning my year. I am really glad that I am not one of those students on those tv and movies I wrote about earlier....I don't think I would do so well on the assignment. Now my son on the other-hand....wow...he would have a lot to write about...

Berries

My cousin recently posted some pictures of some berries he and his fiance had picked. They looked so fresh and I wished I could reach into my computer screen to grab some. I think strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and all of the other sweet, delicious berries available locally for that short window of time in the summer are my very favourite kind of fruit. I don't need them in a pie or on shortcake or biscuits or as jam - plain old berries rinsed, put in a bowl and eaten plain mean summer has actually arrived. The flavour bursts in your mouth and for a millisecond the sun shines even when it is raining out...
When I was young, I remember travelling to the valley with my Mom, Nana and various aunts to go strawberry picking. We (well they...I mostly ate what I found) picked many flats of gorgeous, red, plump strawberries. On the drive home I was always tired from being in the sun and as I would drift off to sleep I had visions of strawberries - in fact I could see nothing else when I shut my eyes for the next day or so. I guess that is what happens after eating them for two to three hours straight! Mom would then take ours home and get them ready for jam and strawberry shortcake and all of the other recipes one can create with them. Later in the summer, we would walk to the top of my subdivision - this was before the condos and apartments and houses had taken over the forest between Dunbrack and the 102 - to go blueberry picking. This was much more difficult as you had to push aside the low bushes in order to reach the blueberries. It also took much longer to fill an ice cream container and I don't think I ate nearly as many while I picked or it would take too long. I don't think I went blueberry picking as often! Again, Mom would make jam and put them in pancakes and muffins.
My son got to have his own experience with strawberries - not with Grammie and Nana and the now Great-aunts, but still with me and his God-mother. When he was around four, we picked him up after a fun visit with Grandma and went to the local valley strawberry U-pick. We spent around an hour picking a flat - this time it was my son who ate each berry he managed to find. He took great delight in showing us how he managed to find the biggest and plumpest berries before popping them in his mouth. At the end of our visit there I took a photo of him - hoping to capture a bright, red strawberry smile, when he spied the camera and for the first time "got" me - he turned around and stuck his tongue out as if to say "hee hee...I got the best strawberries and you didn't". What a cheeky look he had on his face. While it wasn't the photo I wanted, I love it and even have it framed and sitting on my shelf. He fell asleep on the way home from the valley that day - tired from being in the sun. I wish I knew the pictures that went through his head as he slept....

Thank you cousin Bryan for reminding me of how wonderful berries are.

Summer

When people hear the word summer thoughts of hot sunny days lazing at the beach or maybe strolling at the park eating ice cream cones come to mind. Summer can mean visits with realitives not seen for years or maybe a week away at camp. Well, for me, summer means thinking about what I will be doing in the fall....SCHOOL. No matter how many visits I make to Kearney Lake with my son or how many moon mist ice creams we get from Pinkey's or Avery's, I am thinking about school in September. It begins the day I pick up my son's report card. The school year is done, hurray...now I can relax and re-group and have some "me" time. My non-teaching friends say how it must be so nice to have 7 weeks off - they wish they could have that much time off in one stretch - but nope, I don't relax and re-group at all. I don't even think of it as 7 weeks off...to me it is 7 weeks of looking at and experiencing the world as a potential lesson plan....that visit to the lake could become a great art class using sand and saran wrap to make watercolour paints look like the ocean. Visiting and listening to my aunts tell stories about their childhood while at Fall's Lake Campground sends thoughts of autobiographies and creating characters from a different time period that students could write about flying around my head. I tell myself each year that I will not think about school but I can't help it...I am a forever teacher I guess...hmm....maybe my class will do some blogging this year.....