Camp Coles Trip & June Birthdays

Anna at Girl Scout Camp

Anna just returned from a fun-filled week at Girl Scout camp.  This year she was old enough to go to Camp Coles Trip, which is on a bay area off of the Potomac River.  This is a water camp, so she spent her days on the bay learning to paddle board and sail along with kayaking.

Girl Scout Camp is definitely roughing it.  The camp is in the woods and girls stay in platform cabins with screens.  Anna shared a cabin with 4 other girls.  Mosquito netting is very important at night.  The only electricity is at the dining hall, health center, and activity building.  The girls are also responsible each day for doing "kapers" or chores.  They take turns helping serve meals, cleaning the bathrooms, and general clean-up.  They are also responsible for keeping track of their own things and carrying their bags.

Anna had a fantastic time, despite the lack of modern conveniences, and is already planning her return next year.  She made new friends and her favorite things to do were paddle boarding and sailing.  The girls had a camp-out on the beach one night and learned to pitch their own tents.  They also learned about various bugs and how to spot tics (there are three tic checks a day).  There was only one day of homesickness.  Apparently the first night of camp, Anna's cabin got little to no sleep (Anna claims she only slept one hour).  After a day on the water and complete exhaustion, she was so homesick and so upset that they let her sleep in the health unit for the night (apparently she fell asleep before dinner....woke up at 11 PM to eat something....and then went back to sleep for the night).  After a good night's sleep, she was fine the rest of the trip.

While Anna was gone for the week, Joe and Theresa had very quiet evenings.  Storm was lonely and moped around the house all week waiting for Anna to come home.  The big excitement was taking Storm to the park for a walk. Joe and Theresa did get to take a  detour before picking up Anna to visit George Washington's birthplace outside of Colonial Beach, VA.  That ended up to be a very educational tour of another beautiful property on the Potomac. 

Fortunately, everyone is home and life is back to normal (or whatever is normal for summer).  That means a swim meet in the morning.  It seems that half of the swim team was at sleep-away camp this week, thus there will be a lot of tired kids for tomorrow morning's meet.  It is not going to be pretty.

The other event of June was celebrating Anna George's birthday.  This was a milestone birthday, which we will leave to the reader to figure out.  We celebrated a couple of days after the event with dinner, cake and some homemade strawberry ice cream.  Anna G. brought over some new items for Anna F. to make mango smoothies with - something which Anna F. was quite excited about.  Happy Birthday Anna G.!

The two Annas