Bestie

My best friend X has been at camp for the past 7 days. She has visited every year making her one of the few people who truly can see and appreciate the progress I've made. I love having her visit camp, not only because she's my bestie and we have a ton of fun together, but also because she jumps in 100% and helps with kids, staff, programming and doesn't have a problem staying busy if I have to work on something. It's also fun to have her here to witness the constant craziness, meet all of the staff who are the stars of never-ending stories I call to tell her, and give me her perspective on everything at camp.

Over the weekend, she, PDS and I took the pontoon out for several hours. The weather was perfect, the sun was shining and we drove around the lake just relaxing and getting away from work, staff and life. I don't often take time to do that- usually on the weekends I spend time catching up on emails, doing work for the week ahead, cleaning my house and doing laundry, so it was nice to have her there to remind me to have some fun.

This week's theme is Harry Potter and at the beginning of the summer, when we were programming, we'd talked about creating an owl of some sort to deliver the kids' mail. We had a few ideas, but never decided anything, so this weekend, PDS, APDA, X and I tackled the project. All of us love to craft, so it was fun brainstorming and trying to figure out what we would do. X is a master crafter and the person who inspires me to be the most creative, so I was thrilled that owl crafting happened to come at the same time as her visit.

What started as a small(ish) idea of a paper mache owl, of course got bigger and bigger until we had designed a full costume (think of a school mascot). It took four of us close to 12 hours to make and each of us felt overwhelmed or frustrated at some point in the crafting process, but overall, it was a great project with a super cool outcome. When we worked together at camp and in the years since, X and I have crafted many crazy things, so more than anything, it was just fun to get back to being together, creating something, laughing, and being crazy.

And when I swooped in to deliver the mail at lunch, the kids (and some of the staff) were amazed. Yes, sometimes I do things the complicated way and go above and beyond to make tiny details a big deal. It wasn't necessary to have a giant owl deliver the mail, but that's where the magic of camp comes from. I was happy my best friend could be part of the magic!