Hope

My daughter went to 5th grade camp in April.  When I moved to California in middle school all the kids would always talk about camp.  While I had gone to Girl Scout camp I didn't get to go to school camp,  apparently it was a lot of fun.  I also didn't get to go on the 8th grade trip to Washington, D.C. or the French club trip to France.  But I wasn't in the French club.  But you know what I did get to do?  Spring break of freshman year of college I got to stay at the Howard Johnson's right by campus while all my crew teammates were in one of the Carolina's at crew camp.  No, I'm not bitter about any of these missed opportunities.  Actually, I hadn't thot about any of them in a really long time, and I never actually lined them up on a row like that.  Oh, but I guess I did go to Toronto on a school overnighter in like 5th grade.  International travel.  That was pretty fun now that I recall.

But I digress.  5th grade camp.  Do you know how much we spent on that cookie dough fund raiser so that precious daughter could go to the special top find raisers pizza party and go for a ride in a limo?  Yeah, about an incremental 2 inches on my ass worth.  

There were some tears before hand, the fear of the unknown kind of tears, but as the day approached, the fear turned into excitement and off to camp she went!!

She didn't tell us too much when she came back other than that she had fun, got to bunk with one of her BFFs and that there was canoeing and archery.  Several weeks ago, she even used some of her camp knowledge when we were walking along the beach.  There was some weird thing, can't rememebr what it was, but she knew exactly what it was because she learned about it at camp.  It was some weird crab, squid or jelly fish creation using their spit and sand.  I dunno, but it was neat to learn about.

Today was the last day of school.  No more elementary school for that girl.  Her teacher sent out a link to photos from camp.  Thousands of photos,  and of course I looked at every single one.  I downloaded the ones with her in them,  and them I came across this one. 

I stopped on it because I recognized the bandana, but since all the kids got bandanas color coded to their cabins, I thought maybe it was just one if the other girls.  But then I noticed the bracelets.  

That grey one says HOPE.  It's the one I gave her in 2012 after the people from my brain tumor group sent it to me.  We wear grey for brain tumor awareness and she wears that bracelet for me.  

When I saw that, I had to fight back the tears.  I love that little girl.  So sweet, so compasionate and so stubborn.