Back to School

...to recover from our last two weeks.

We have had a joyfully busy end of summer.

The older two girls and I went to an American Heritage Girls' summer camp.  They earned lots of badges, and I taught badge work (beginning and advanced sewing), did dishes, handled health and safety at my end of camp at night (I was the person to wake if someone was ill or to watch the cabins to be sure girls stayed in during a lightening storm...it was a peaceful as could be expected), manned bounce houses, hiked out with the girls building their shelters to spend the night in (Yay! Gabby!), and sat in with some Leaders in Training (young ladies under the age of 21 who taught badge work, but needed an older person there to maintain the guidelines of our organization.  Justin had the younger ones at home, going on hikes, doing all the meals and laundry, and generally keeping them busy.

Last week was three days of working with a young lady in our troop on her Stars and Stripes Project (a 100+ hour service project for a non-profit, planning, fundraising, and executing the project, while supervising younger youth).  I heard we moved between five and seven metric tons of gravel on Saturday (5 girls aged 8 to 17, their moms, and two fellows)!

Last week we also saw the orthodontist, visited the eye doctor, made a final trip to our YMCA pool for the summer, went to a double feature at the drive in (and didn’t get home until a quarter to two!), dropped by the library, drove to meet my parents to let Ellie visit with them for two of those work days, Justin and Nate went camping (in a cave),  the older girls and I went to visit my parents (and their new puppies) for a quick visit and to pick up Ellie, and had lunch with my sister too.

So school...we'll stay home a little more and see if we can catch our breath.  Don't breathe too deeply though. Trail Life starts tomorrow!