First Day of Camp 

Was my son going to get cheated out of his summer vacation because I'm a working mom? This was the question that kept racing through my mind mid-way through my son's first year of elementary school.  When he leaves Kindergarten in June, would he feel like less fortunate than his peers who "got to" stay home all summer?  It's never simple balancing work and family as a working mom, but this particular dilemma was new to me.  You see, during the daycare years, the transition to summertime was seamless and frankly unnoticeable. Why was that? Well, all of his friends were in the exact same boat. Not so with elementary school. In fact, several of my son's closest friends have moms who are teachers or freelance or don't work.  How was I going to ensure that my son had a great summer? Or better yet, was that even possible?

Back in February, my fellow working mom friends and I were frantically signing our kids up for camp, or more accurately camps. I registered my son for six-weeks at the local golf and tennis club, followed by two weeks of day camp at the YMCA, and added one additional week of
Art Camp (there is no camp the last week of summer, but that's a topic for another day).  As you can imagine, there are numerous logistics associated with singing up for multiple camps and then there's tuition, something we hoped not to see after years of daycare payments.  In fact, camp does not come cheap.  Honesty, though, the looming sign up deadlines and credit card charges were nothing compared to the unknown: would my son feel like he got robbed of his summer vacation?

To my surprise (and delight!) my son loves camp and has said multiple times that he's a very lucky kid because he gets to go to the "Best Camp Ever!" Phew, what a relief.  The kid can't wait to go each morning and is having the time of his life - playing sports, making new friends, eating chocolate cake for snack - and he can't wait to tell me about the games he plays and crafts he's made when I fetch him in the afternoon.

Sure, we still need to transition to camp #2 and #3, but I can honestly say that the first several weeks of summer have been a joy for our family and a big relief for me.  My son has his cake and is eating it, too.

Our family in the Midwest likes having our kids come visit for a stretch of time in the summer. So we met my mother in-law and her sister in Ohio so the kids could go with her to Kansas for two weeks. After driving for about 12 hours each from opposite directions, we met up with them at a motel off the highway.

That night, we all piled into one motel room (hey, we're cheap, what can we say)and planned to rise early to get back on the road, again in opposite directions.

At 5 a.m., my mother in-law and her sis jumped out of bed and started running circles around us as we stood by bleary-eyed. In what seemed like mere moments later, my husband and I were left standing in the parking lot of the hotel, watching the tail lights of his mother's red sedan fade out of sight.

We stared into the distance. "What just happened?" we both wondered aloud.

"I think those two ladies just took our kids," I said.

So there we stood, kidless on the far western edge of Ohio and two days off ahead of us.

WOOOO HOOOO!

We proceeded to have a great couple of days, meandering our way back to Ballston Spa, stopping to stroll a pier on Presque Isle in Erie, Pa., and have dinner at the home of the original Buffalo wings (the Anchor Bar). We stayed at a great hotel in downtown Buffalo and did the tourist bit at Niagara Falls the next day.

Then it was back to the grind -- except the kids were still gone. It took about a week or so before I really started to miss them. And after two weeks of couple time, we were ready for the little monsters to come home. It is possible for the house to be too quiet.