Camp, day 5 {The fiesta and a celebrity}

The last day of camp was a giant fiesta.

Since it was Family Day, we weren't assigned to watch any children at the beginning of the day but we had other responsibilities like setting up and decorating the garden and helping with crafts. I'm sure it was an entertaining morning for anyone who was watching 15 buddies trying to untangle and hang Mexican decorations at 8:30 in the morning. For sleep deprived, energy drained people, we did a very nice job{if I do say so myself}.

I was in the middle of helping to make paper plate maracas when I was pulled to watch Israel while his mom was at a doctors appointment. Kelsey came over to the maraca table looking for a volunteer to stay with him so I said I would do it. I totally was thinking of a different child so I was pretty shocked when I realized it was Israel and not Jaime. Jaime would have been much calmer; Israel is a very loud child. "CAN WE GO ON THE FIRETRUCK? WHERE'S MY CLAPPING THING? WHAT ARE ALL THOSE KIDS DOING?" He was much more interested in playing in the grass then watching the staff event but he did get into it a little and shake his "clapping thing." Israel's just a very on-the-go boy who didn't want to spend time watching doctors get made into tacos by having "taco food"- green spaghetti for lettuce, vanilla pudding for sour cream, and so on- poured on them before they were rolled up in a towel. I'm so glad I wasn't a victim of such messiness.

Oh yes, I ate lunch with a celebrity.

Ok, well she's not really a celebrity but she does work with people who are celebrities. Maybe they're not real celebrities. Actually, they're not celebrities at all. However, I really like them and since I'm easily star-struck, they're celebrities to me. The lovely lady works for my favorite radio station and knows my favorite dj and favorite traffic reporter. {Yes, I do have a favorite traffic reporter.} If you've ever heard Tim and Brian you'll understand why they make my early morning drives much happier. The thing that kills me is that I was too shy to ask the lady her name even though I was dying to know if she's on the morning show too. I didn't want to assume she was and be wrong, but I didn't want to just straight out ask her. I am WAY over-analyzing this.

I have two three more comments then I'll be quiet:

1. Eating lunch with an almost-celebrity would have made my hour.

2. I will feel so stupid if I find it she is on the radio because all we talked about was the guys. I would feel terrible knowing I didn't tell her I like her too. This is getting to be way too much for me to handle.

3. Playing baseball with almost-Red Sox on Monday, eating with almost- celebrities on Friday...clearly this has been a big week for me.

Back to the camp. It was sad saying goodbye to the children but thankfully not as sad as I thought it would be. I plan on volunteering again next year and all my favorite children plan on attending so we'll all be together again soonish. 

Camp, day 4{an attempt at a short post since I’m so tired from all the activity}

I don’t know if it’s because it’s Thursday, if we really did more than the other days, because I only slept a total of 5 hours last night or a combination of three, but today was a lot of work. We packed so much into our day. For Meg{my buddy partner}, Jared, Brandon, Jaime and I, the day’s activities included, but were not limited to, the following:

A concert complete with dancing, jumping, wiggling, shouting, bubbles, spray bottles, and more dancing
Bringing the boys to the bathroom
Having a snack
Finding the bathroom
Playing outside
Climbing in the firetruck
Painting flower pots and making tissue paper flowers
Jarred and I being the subjects of a newspaper photographer during the whole above activity
Hula-hooping
Eating lunch
Somebody needs to use the bathroom again.
Making real flower arrangements- I was so impressed with how pretty the arrangements were. I never would have thought that so many children would do such a beautiful job. The boys arrangements were especially impressive seeing how they’re…boys.
Oh look, we’re near the bathroom so why don’t we go in?
Gymnastics- The kids loved gymnastics. About every half hour throughout the day Jarred would ask “is it almost time for gymernatics?”. All the flipping and crashing almost made Meg and I lose about three years off our lives.
Another snack, another trip to the you-know-where.
A few rounds of Duck Duck Goose to pass the time.
“I need to use the bathroom!”- In case you didn’t pick up on it, we spent a good amount of our day in the bathroom. {“Did you wash your hands? Good. Did you use soap? Well then, you can just turn yourself right around and go wash them again.”}
Going home.

Jared and Brandon just made my day. They’re so cute that the percentage of my future sons I’d like to have might have jumped all the way from 25% to 40%. They’re at the cute stage where they’re just starting to act like big boys but they still like sitting on our laps and carrying their stuffed animals everywhere. Jaime was the most serious in our group but the kid sure did know how to get his groove on during the concert. A newspaper from their town was there to interview Jarred and his brother Jacob about the camp so the photographer spent almost all morning with us {I don’t think he spent much of his time with Jacob because he seemed glued to us the whole time}. The fact that having a photographer two feet from my face didn’t faze me proves that my body was running on a very small amount of sleep and therefore I was past caring. Normally I’d be all “oh my goodness, I have to look good!” Hopefully, I’ll be able to get and scan some of the pictures so I can put them up. We’re not allowed to take any pictures during camp{hospital policies, yada yada}but since I didn’t take the pictures it's ok to show them. I’d love to have a picture with one of the kids. It’s probably a good thing I wasn’t allowed to bring my camera; I would end up with way too many pictures.

Tomorrow is the last day so I'll have to say the sad goodbyes. I can't think about that anymore so I'll just go to bed now. I'll be much more useful to people after I've had some quality bonding time with my bed.

Camp, day 3

Two days at camp week are really BIG. One is Family Day and the other is field trip day. Today was field trip day and we went to the zoo. I love the zoo so I was probably almost as excited as the kids.{As a side note, I think it’s good that I’m going into a profession that lets me do the “kid things” that I still like to do. After all, how many bankers get to spend a Wednesday at the zoo? Exactly. Not very many.} My Buddy partner was Alyssa who is also a preschool teacher/zoo lover. She just went there with her class so she knew the latest zoo news and got all of us excited about the elephant show. We were in charge of four boys: Dylan and Evan(twin brothers), Jacob and Shane. Considering we had four boys, our day went very smoothly.

Everyone from our camp wore matching orange shirts and you know what happened when we got off our bus? We saw another camp with about 125 kids standing in the parking lot wearing orange shirts. So much for standing out. At least the giraffe on our shirts shot us way up there on the coolness scale. The parking lot was also the place of great tragedy. Kelsey, the director, told us the zoo “didn’t have an elephant any more” which is just another way of saying “the elephant died on July 28^th”. I would have just said “the elephant died” so we wouldn’t have to deal with the “where did the elephant go?” and “will it be here this afternoon?” questions. It was traumatic for about three minutes but thankfully the kids{and adults}loved the other animals so the poor elephant was soon forgotten. There was even a deer forest we could walk around in. We didn’t get to pet any deer because another group thought the best way to feed the deer from their hands was by charging at them. You’d think by the 10^th unsuccessful charge they’d have realized that they scared away every single deer but they didn’t.

Our boys were those zoom here, zoom there, zoom everywhere zoo visitors. Poor Shane could barely keep up with the other three but he was perfectly content to walk…very…very…slowly…while the others ran ahead. Jacob was very kind to him and kept saying “come on, little dude! You can come with us, little dude!” Speaking of Shane, Alyssa and I felt so bad because we didn’t realize{Kelsey forgot to tell us}that the reason he was so much slower than the others and why he didn’t want to eat his lunch was because he’s still having his cancer treatments and probably wasn’t feeling great. We thought he was just one of those slower children; he is only 4 years old. He had a great day at the zoo though which is basically the point of the camp. We want all the former/current children with cancer to have fun just like “normal” children regardless of what they may be going through. Where was I? Oh yes, the boys were really fast. They were so fast we saw all the animals{except the rhino which we somehow missed}two hours before we had to leave. We brought them to a bird show to use up some time but it only made Alyssa and I roll our eyes at the lady telling us how “Baby is the most honest bird we have here are the zoo. She always tells us just how she’s feeling.” Really? And how does she do that? All she does is nod her head and say “cracker”. We finished our field trip by spending the rest of our time at the playground playing with Autumn and Leif then boarded the bus and went back to the hospital.

It was such a fun day but I am so, so, so, so tired from it all. If I don’t go to bed right now, I will be NO good tomorrow. Tomorrow we have a concert so I have to rest up. I can’t be falling asleep during The Chicken Dance or anything.

Camp, day 2

First up is a report on yesterday’s business about Rafael and Elijah: neither shed tears over the fact I wasn’t their Buddy today. Elijah waved at and talked to me throughout the day but Rafael was too busy keeping Katie on her toes to spend much time on me. That’s ok because I spent the day with Caitlynn and Catrina and it was a day in the park. They did what they were supposed to do when they were supposed to do it and even when they were running around the garden they weren’t maniacs. Girls can be so easy.{It’s just more reiteration as to why 75% of my future children will be girls. Please don’t bring up how much I love Braden and Noah. That’s completely beside the point.} My Buddy partner was the other Sarah and she had Carisssa so in our group we had Sarah, Sarah, Caitlynn, Catrina, and Carissa. It was a slightly tongue-twisterish day.

The first event of the day was the bubble party. It’s official name was Bop and Pop party and all it involved was a dj playing music while a bubble machine blew hundreds of bubbles into the air. The idea was good but the dj wasn’t so great. The music was so loud it scared some of the little ones. Brandon, however, was not scared in the least. He would stand with his face three inches from the bubble machine with his mouth wide open so he could eat the bubbles. That kid had so many dried bubbles on him by the end of the day that his mother won’t need to put any bubbles into his bubble bath for weeks.

By far the most popular activity of the day was the giant gingerbread giraffes. Each child had their own to decorate with four colors of frosting and a colorful and sugary array of candies. Caitlynn and Catrina were so good. They didn’t lick the frosting off the spatula or eat any candy until they were done decorating. Autumn the Adorable was a decorator after my own heart. The candy on her giraffe was lined up according to size, color, and type. It just made me so happy.

Today is the BIG event…we’re taking a field trip to the zoo!

Camp,day 1

Today was the first day of the week-long camp for cancer patients and their siblings{ages 3-8} I'm helping at. Even though I've volunteered at the children's hospital for the last two and a half years,it was my first volunteering at the camp.

I was the Buddy{meaning responsible for all day}for two 7 year old boys named Rafael and Elijah. They were very cute and sweet all morning. They sat when they were supposed to sit and did what they were supposed to do when it was supposed to be done. When I told them it was snack time, Rafael even gave me a big hug and said,"you're my favorite buddy!". I thought we were all meant for each other but then the afternoon rolled around and I started to think different things.

Let's just say they became your average 7 year old boys.

I may pride myself at being some experienced babysitter who can handle just about anything that comes my way but there's a small distraction at camp that I never have to deal with while babysitting: his name is Jared and he's the only boy Buddy. Once Rafael and Elijah realized there was a boy who would pick them up and pull and push them all over the place, it was goodbye, Sarah! Both Rafael and Elijah are sweet boys, but they couldn't resist being with all the other boys 1,000% of the time. Consequently, I spent the next 4 hours chasing them around, trying not to lose them, and wishing for goodness sake that more guys would have signed up! I'm sure Jared spent the whole day thinking about the fact he was the most popular person at the hospital. I may or may not{leaning heavily towards may}have temporarily lost one or both boys more than once. It's not easy to keep track of two children who are running all over the place when there are 25+ other children around. As I found out, nobody was really surprised about what was going on in our trio; everyone else was very sympathetic to my plight. I don't want it to sound like I didn't like it because I did, it was just a lot of work. I think today would have been a little difficult anyways just because it was my first day.

And what did we do for fun?

We had a puppet show{some of the jokes the puppeteer told were so over our heads there wasn't any way the kids got it}. A reptile man came with a slithery, slimy collection of snakes, frogs and lizards. Elijah and Rafael had a major show-down every time he showed a new animal.

R: "I've held a lizard before."

E: "I've held a snake before."

R: "Well, I've held a poisonous snake!"
E: "Oh yeah! I've held TWO poisonous snakes!"

R: complete silence

We also played Wiffle ball with these two gentlemen:

{They were very popular among the ladies.} They play baseball on the AAA ball team of the Boston Red Sox. You may have heard of them. The highlight of my day was that I was SO the manager of our team{said team consisted of 9 boys who insisted on standing right behind the batter within inches of getting smacked in the head every time the bat was swung}during the game. My newest claim to fame is that I played baseball with the {almost}Red Sox, oh yes I did. If only I had known they were going to be there, I would have worn my Red Sox earrings.

Tomorrow we're decorating giant giraffe gingerbread cookies{a giraffe is the camp's mascot}and having a bubble party. I've never been to an official bubble party, but I can imagine that it probably involves large amounts of very large bubbles. The real question for tomorrow is will Rafael and Elijah be stuck with the apparently boring Sarah, or will they join the ranks of happy Jared buddies?