The Sounds of Summer. Sort of.

Be very still and listen for a moment.

Do you hear that? I mean really hear it?

If you are within a 3 block radius of my house, you probably cannot hear much because the smell of week old camp clothes might have overpowered your senses.

The smell was so bad, within about 30 minutes of arriving at home and dragging that moldy mess of suitcases inside, I made them turn right around and drag it all onto the front porch.

I still haven’t fumigated my car from the ride home.

But that is not what I'm referring to.

No, what I'm referring to is the sounds of August and BACK TO SCHOOL.

When my alarm went off this morning, I awoke to the DJs discussing a BACKPACK DRIVE.

YES!

That put me in a better Monday morning mood than 3 cups of coffee with no Lucky Charms.

I just love the word BACKPACK, when I hear it in August (except when I am buying 3 news ones and my school supply bill is a few grand.) Oh well, I’ll take it.

And a few minutes after the DJs made my day, kids #2 and #3 headed to out to FOOTBALL CAMP, another sure sign that my never ending days of a house filled with overflowing pubescent testosterone are almost over.

Next week, Tyler gets his books and a parking pass.

Weehaw!

I can almost hear the silence in my house on the first day of school when they all head out. I can almost hear that front door slamming shut and the bus driving off.

Sure, until then, the smell of boys returning from football camp can momentarily overpowers the sound of back to school.

My super neighbor from next door was kind enough to stop by Saturday evening and look at the pile of post-summer-camp gear and tell me my front porch was 'percolating.'

(The camp pile. What you cannot know is that the black suitcase to the left sat there closed for a good 6 hours before my neighbor came over and mentioned that something was brewing on my porch. We decided to open it and everything was wet. Be glad there is no smell-o-web here.)

That's fine, I can take it.

Right now, I'm like the lady in the old Mervyn's commercials with my face pressed on the glass of the front door to the junior high:

‘OPEN, OPEN, OPEN.’

PS. Can someone please email me and let me know when the first day of school is?

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Brotherly Love

I’m not sure I can do this but I will try.

In a few days, my younger (and only) brother and his wife and their three small children will be moving from Houston, back to his wife’s hometown in rural Indiana.

We’ve all known this was coming. It has not been a secret.

They have to do what is best for their family, and trying to raise small children in the rat race of Houston is hard and not good for small children.

In 1994, when my husband and I had one child, we did the exact same thing-packed up and moved with our 14 month old to a small town we had visited exactly one time.

As a new mom, I felt like the crime and city life was not where I wanted my kids to be raised.

Four years and two babies later, we moved right back so I could be near my mom.

When we moved back, our kids were the exact same age as my brother’s kids are now.

I understand the need to be near family and have help, and it’s been hard for our family to help them much due to our own crazy work schedules.

But, in my whole life, I have never, ever been far from my brother. We’ve lived within 2 hours of each other for almost twenty years now.

We weren’t exactly best friends growing up. That’s putting it mildly.

He was absolutely incorrigible as a younger brother.

Imagine Dennis the Menace on steroids. And then some.

 

 

 

 

 

He had some great gifts:

• He was very curious. He loved to take things apart. The problem was, everything he took apart was mine. And he had NO skill for putting things back together.
• He was skilled at vanishing, instantly. I cannot remember how many times we would be at the mall, long before the days of cell phones, and quite literally, you would blink your eyes and he would be gone. And he would stay gone. After the malls were nearly closed, and my mom had travelled the property at least three times with mall security and mumbled every four letter word under her breath, he would instantly appear at the car, looking at us all like ‘what, where’s everyone been?’

  I remember one summer day, he was grounded for something, who knows what.

  He got in the shower, which should have been a big clue that something was up, but I wasn’t a mom then and didn’t know 11 year old boys rarely take showers in the summer. About an hour later, I realized that shower had been going way too long.

  He had pulled my dads dresser drawer out, which blocked the window and must have weight 150 pounds, and my 11 year old brother had climbed OUT THE WINDOW and gone out to play. My charge had escaped

There were times when he would infuriate me, I would chase him around so I could just beat his a** for something he had done to me, but he was younger and faster and usually made it away from me.

He was awful, just awful-everything you would expect from a younger brother, multiplied by a thousand!

As the big sister though, I always got my revenge.

He loved Ramen Noodles, it was his favorite food (go figure). But he hated the noodles broken into pieces, they HAD to be whole. ;)

Think you can run faster than me? That’s fine. I can sure get the Ramen noodles out, all of them, and crunch them into a zillion pieces.

This brought the running to an instant halt, along with instant wails on injustice.

Loved it. Can you tell I still take pride in my creative revengefulness?

We were home alone during the summer a lot, and it was my job to make sure he got into as little trouble as possible (a nearly impossible feat.) A few times he would try to call my dad at work to report my few, I’m sure minor, infractions.

I would pick up the other phone line and sit.

You cannot call out when someone has the other phone off the hook. Heh, heh.

Think you can report on me mister? Good luck with that. I would just hold the other phone off the hook while he screamed about it not being fair that he couldn’t call out.

Saying he was sneaky, more like the devil, is an understatement.

One day last week, my eye caught one of those large photo frames we have in our house that holds several different sized photos. There is a photo of him holding my middle son as a newborn and kissing Tyler, who was about two years old.

I remembered that he brought Tyler a pair of new born Air Jordans to the hospital when he was born, when he had no job, and no business buying a newborn $60 shoes.

I realized when I saw that photo, how lucky I had been to have my children grow up around him their whole lives. They’ve had more head locks, wedgies, farts in their faces, and baseball games than anyone can imagine. He has been an integral part of their lives, and I am lucky that they have formed a life long bond with him that I know will last regardless of where he lives.

I was in the hospital room, helping (because he’s still such a chicken) when all three of his kids were born.

I understand the need to do what is right for your family. But, the air around us will be a little different, and it will take my entire extended family awhile to adjust to them being gone.

I hope he knows how much I love him and how proud I am of him-he is an amazing, wonderful, father-and how much we will miss them, how much my boys will miss the headlocks, the Christmas dinners, the Confetti Easter Eggs, the wedgies.

Now that I think about it, I bet he’s moving now because my kids are finally big enough to collectively take him down and return the wedgies and headlocks.

Chicken.

I guess I better Google the directions to Indiana.

And good luck with those Yankees, Sean.

Maybe you should ask one of them if you can take their car apart to fix it? ;)

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Camp Chaos

I picked up the kids this morning, after their week long stay at Camp Allen.

I know a lot of parents are hesitant to send their kids off to stay in the woods, with other adults who apparently find joy in babysitting other people's children for a week.

Given what we hear on the news every day, I guess can I understand that.

My kids have gone to camp every year now for probably 8 years.

For one week, they leave behind all electronics, Ipods, cell phones, video games, computers, the Internet, and their local friends, and head off to Camp Allen, a non-denominational Christian camp about 90 minutes from where we live.

It's not cheap to send three kids to camp. And the ride up there and back can be daunting with so many sleeping bags, suitcases, pillows and bags crammed in the car.

But, every year, the chaotic Saturday morning I pick them up, I am reminded why we do this, why I save for it, why we have begged the grandparents to chip in on occasion, so they can do this for one week.

They are dirty, smelly, stinky. Jordan is beyond old deviled eggs. My car needs to be fumigated.

With all of that, there is nothing like going to pick them up, and watching all three at their own cabins with their new and old friends, take the time to say good bye.

And I don't mean the whole shoulder-hug-see-ya-later male goodbye.

No, as I arrived at each cabin and tracked them down among the piled of suitcases, sleeping bags and wandering parents, each of them genuinely sought out their camp counselors (some of whom are not but a year or so older) and their friends and gave them big, two armed bear hug goodbyes.

And, each of them said to me, before we leave mom, I want you to meet my counselor, and I got personal introductions to the barely 18 year old kids who agreed to mentor my children for a week.

For the next 90 minutes, as we headed home, they took turns, non-stop until we got to the front door, frustrated if someone interrupted their story, filling me in:

-Someone ate (and supposedly swallowed) a Cicada. Minus the wings. Tyler's response? 'How could they do that, Cicadas make funny noises?'

-Chase's group dared the counselors on some kind of 'jug challenge' where the counselors have to drink, in one guzzle, a gallon of milk. One threw up. Another one decided to stick his tongue on the throw up to show off. I'm not sure how they are screening these camp counselors? The kids loved it.

-Someone in Jordan's group had webbed toes, and he pronounced that this made him a faster swimmer. Jordan believed him. Chase spent 15 minutes letting Jordan know he was crazy to fall for that.

-Chase then proceeded, immediately thereafter, to tell me he needs some nail polish remover. That got a strange look. 'Well, someone painted my toe nails.'

-Jordan had triplets in his cabin. Thank goodness these are not co-ed dorms. When he first said that he had triplets in his cabin, I had to think for a second. Apparently the two that were identical were 'major flirts mom, okay, like seriously, they were huge flirts with every girl, it was obnoxious.' The 3rd triplet 'kept his head in a book the whole week.'

As we got closer to home, the conversation changed though, from eating Cicadas, guzzling milk, and flirty triplets, to the testimonials they'd heard about from their counselors, their relationships with God, and the friends they hoped to stay in touch with.

I thought for sure that Tyler would say this is his last year. Not many 16 year olds want to go to summer church camp.

Instead he said, 'I'm trying to figure out which week next summer I can apply to be a counselor.'

Mission accomplished.

Now if I can just figure out how to get that one-week-of-summer-camp smell out of my car.

(QOTB: Did you go to summer camp as a kid and what are your memories? I didn't go, we travelled too much, but it was always something I wanted to do.)

Looking for a camp in your area or advice on sending a kid to camp? Try this website:
http://www.acacamps.org/ or www.campallen.org, if you are in Texas.

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