My family just got back from a trip out to Colorado to visit family and to… ski!!  I’ve never been skiing before and quite frankly am not sure I have any talent for it at all - it took me all of two hours to make it down the bunny slope… just once.     But both Emma and Will absolutely loved skiing down that same slope!  Luckily their Daddy is a good skier and so he took them up and down until their little legs could hardly hold them up any longer.  I was sooo impressed with them!  They’d just hold onto his ski pole and down they went laughing the whole way.  Are your kids supposed to show you up when when they’re still barely in school?   

For the first time in months the alarm clock woke me up first this morning.  Normally it’s the sound of Elizabeth crying that wakes me up… but this morning started a new routine.  Back to school.  How did the summer end so quickly!?!?! 

Anyone else feel like the time has gone too fast!  This morning Emma was clearly excited and nervous to be starting first grade.  When I whipped out the camera – oh how embarassing, I’m sure – in front of her friends I got some eye rolling action from her.  Last year it was exciting and fun to have Mommy out at the bus stop with her… and now I’m the embarassing Mom with a camera.  LoL – I guess she’ll just have to get used to it because I’m not putting my camera away anytime soon.  Miss a single moment of firsts for my children?  I wouldn’t dream of it.  ;)

What have I done?  I’ve posted before about Emma growing up (check out OMG She’s SO High! ), but this one takes the cake.  Let’s rewind a few years.  My mother-in-law started Grandma Camp as a tradition for her daughter’s girls when Emma was just a baby.  She takes the girls for a few days to some age appropriate out of town location for a little mini- Grandma-vacation.  By the time Emma was only two she’s been asked, and asked…. and asked to go with her cousins (whom, I should mention, she adores) on the yearly Grandma Camp adventure.  And every year we’ve politely said no, Emma is just too young right now.  And then this year rolled around.  Oh, what was I thinking?!?!?  Emma has matured quite a bit this year and she’s expressed shall we say a LOT of interest in going on Grandma Camp.  So we did trials runs – she stayed the night at Grandma’s house quite a few times and she loved it everytime! 

So…. with much hesitation… I said yes. 

Logically I know that Emma is fine.  My mother-in-law is an accomplished pediatrition, raised 5 kids of her own and, best of all, she loves Emma to death.  But emotionally it’s a whole other story.  I come from a family that is close – extremely close.  The word camp itself didn’t exist in our house  – camping was really nothing more than a theory.  The closest we ever got to typical kids summer camp was with all my brothers and sister, Mom, Dad and Grandparents in the back of my Grandpa’s produce truck (which was, I have to admit, super exciting to hang out in)… parked in the backyard… with a TV… and it only lasted until the youngest kids started to fall asleep.  Sleepovers were practically nonexistent and actually going away longer than a night was very literally unheard of.  And now here I am – breaking all my Mother’s rules.  And it’s making me sick!

Good or bad, it’s done now.  Emma is officially away at Grandma Camp.  I can’t complain about it now- as much as it pains me, I’ve made my choice.  This is just one more adventure in the grand tale called Parenting that I’ve long ago chosen to live by.  So the best I can do is to take a big breath and analyze every little detail found in the pictures I’m sent every night.    Is that obsessive?  LoL – I certainly hope not!