Outdoor Education...

We're one little girl short for the next about two and a half days.
Sunshine gets to be the Only Child until Wednesday.
Neither child is positive what to do with this.
Moms are a little nervous. We've not had Fe leave our house overnight without close family supervision yet. BioGP wanted to keep her "for a night or weekend" in the beginning (ya, right. I think we all knew that there was not chance, but I guess he had to try.) clearly, that didn't happen. While we've had both siblings here for overnight visits, and no one has bothered to try for keeping Fe; which is good because we would still say no.


A night bag and a day backpack for a little girl who managed to only pack what was on the "bring this" list. She resisted that urge to stuff everything she owns in. This is really big because it shows me that she KNOWS she's coming home and her stuff will still be here, waiting for her.


Sally tolerates a ton from our girls. This morning that was Fe petting her with "great fervor" (earning her a nice long romp at the dog park :-) ) to get some of that fear out. She was telling Sally how much she loves her and just doing the general chatter, chatter, chatter that is Fe.

My assurances to her ended up amusing me oh-so-much.
"Don't worry too much Fe baby, by the time Wednesday rolls around, you'll be sad that it's time to go home. You are going to have *so much* fun!"
"No, mama. If I stay, I'll miss MamaM's birthday. I LOOOVE birthdays!  would miss Mama's birthday, and sister's birthday and andand and my birthday too. I love birthdays, I wouldn't want to stay because I would miss BIRTHDAYS!"

Girl knows what's important to her!

We got to school and she took a deep breath before diving in. As I'm typing, I really hope she remembered to get her gym shoes before they left. (I forgot to remind her.) Otherwise, she's going to be spending all of her time wearing those snow boots.
It felt good to see that while many things waiting to be loaded looked like garbage bags of kids' camp gear, Fe held a duffle bag with her belongings. It occurred to me the frequency that kids are passed along with their *stuff* in big, black trash bags. It also gave me hope that Fe would feel that little bit of value and security and now that she is important enough to warrant a real place to store her stuff.

I am excited for Fe. I went to [church] camp many, many times before high school. I always loved the space and nature and quiet. I loved the solitude without being isolated. Being able to study and process without being paged every five minutes to do something for someone. She's such a "big girl helper" I think she probably feels similarly. I really hope she has an incredible time!