The Joy of Our Chaos: Lauren Goes to Camp Honey Creek

Look at this beautiful girl! I can scarcely believe that this is my first-born baby, now almost 9 years old. 3 days ago, we took her to Camp Honey Creek for her first ever away-from-home-for-10-days experience. Since I haven't blogged in what feels like a century, I'll give you some background about how we came to find and love Camp Honey Creek.

My good friend Meredith McBee, mother to Jon Owen's friend David McBee, born and bred Dallas-ite, and expert on all things early-childhood appropriate (she is a former kindergarten teacher at Hockaday, which is one of the most prestigious private schools in the country) often talked about her camp experiences at Camp Honey Creek. She began camping at the age of 8 or 9, and has gone to camp every year since. She still goes to camp, loves the people, and is very involved. The girls who were her cabin-mates her first year of camp are still some of her best friends, they still take trips together and meet at camp several times a year. It was and is a BIG part of her life.

So she started talking to me about the possibility of Lauren going to camp and all of the good things it would give her. Sisterhood, sense of responsibility, independence. I loved what I heard, but was nervous about the being away from home part -- so we attended a Mother/Daughter weekend, checked it out, and fell in love with it. Lauren was right in her element, swimming, canoeing, shooting bb guns (the girl has crazy accurate aim), horseback riding, and playing old fashioned games with other girls (Camp Honey Creek is a girls-only camp). There are no tv's, no phones, no movies -- Camp Honey Creek hasn't changed the way they do things in 30 years, it is truly a back to basics experience. And I liked it. So we signed her up for Term 1A, which is a 10 day term. There are also 2 week and 4 week terms.

There was a fair amount of shopping and preparation to be done, so I went straight from school-year-end craziness to get-ready-for-camp-craziness. Here is one piece of the craziness...her camp trunk. Apparently you MUST have a trunk and it MUST be hand painted with their name on it.....as you can see, it's adorable.

So Thursday afternoon, we all loaded in the car to make the pilgrimage to Hunt, Texas (about 6 hours away from Dallas, in the much prettier Hill Country) to deliver Lauren to camp. We stopped in Austin and checked into the Hyatt Lost Pines resort, we thought we would make a long weekend out of it. So before taking her to camp on Friday, we did some swimming and had some fun.

So Friday mid-morning we loaded her in the car and drove her the remaining 2 hours to camp. She quickly got settled, met her camp counselors, Elizabeth and Serena (pictured -- Lauren was getting ready to take her swimming test), and met the other girls in her cabin.

Lauren made fast friends with the other girls in her cabin -- some new campers like herself, some returning campers (one or two girls were going on their FOURTH year at camp and staying for an entire month), and Lauren's Parish friend Kendall Stewart (in the black and pink). She adjusted quickly and wanted to play with the others, and since the camp instructions informed us that we should leave on a high, we quickly said our goodbyes. I didn't cry until we got to the car (again, camp instructions), but I've been crying off and on ever since. I miss my girl! I know she is having fun, but still, I miss her.

So we spent the rest of the weekend with the boys at Lost Pines, swimming, making s'mores, riding bikes. Here are a few snapshots....