Camp Juliet

Our second year of Camp Juliet was a huge success. This tradition started 3 years ago when a group of us camped in our backyard and had so much fun that we decided to actually go camping last year. This year we were back and better than ever. 21 of us headed to Silas’s parents’ cabin to spend the weekend hanging out. It is becoming one of the absolute highlights of my year.

We had a pre-camp tie dye party earlier in the week and I felt such joy seeing everyone arrive in their new shirts! Even Boyd (the dog) had a fancy new bandana to wear. Stephanie designed the logo (the outline is the shape of Mac Groveland on the map) and I am just tickled every time I look at it.

We had 21 of us (Eric and Sarah were missing when we did group photos but they were there too!).

We all arrived in the early afternoon on Friday. The kids were in the water within minutes of arrival while the adults got tents set up, coolers unpacked and very shortly afterwards, were also at the beach with drinks in hand.

This year, we decided to have a “choose your own adventure” board and the kids worked QUICKLY to get as many stickers to check off their lists. They wanted the prize I promised to anyone who completed it (unfortunately, I waited until Sunday to hand out prizes).

Kelly and Silas had a brand new “hot dog” that we inflated and the kids were obsessed all weekend. On Sunday morning, Kelly, Melissa and I rode it and I finally understood why that was the first thing out of the boys’ mouths every morning- it was incredibly fun. The kids swam, spent hours catching fish in little nets, fished with actual poles for a while, caught frogs and built houses for them, ran around like wild children of the woods. The adults relaxed, swam, ate good snacks, drank good drinks, and laughed a lot. Grown ups helped whichever kid needed something and kids didn’t shout “mom!” the whole time, instead, took advantage of a plethora of helpful adults to hand out snacks or untangle fishing lines.

On Friday night, we ate hot dogs and a pot luck of one million amazing foods (my neighbors all know how to cook!). Then we boated over to a nearby bar for some drinks, a little bit of karaoke, and kiddie cocktails for the kiddos. We were quite a spectacle, 2 boats of people in matching tie dye shirts.

We put the kids to bed in the tents and then sat around the campfire until way too late at night. Sean had made several brackets for us to argue about- think of a typical basketball bracket, but instead of teams, it was categories like appetizers, cheeses, 90s movies, etc. He had pre-made the brackets, so we got to vote (and debate and in some cases yell) Snickers vs. Twix, or Cheddar vs. Brie, or whatever category it was until we had an overall winner. So fun.

On Saturday morning, each tent could be heard having the same 6am conversation- “it’s super early, try to go back to sleep” followed by “can we go tubing yet?”. Kids were RARING to go.

The kids were in the water right away, while the adults sipped coffee and gradually woke up. Some people went for runs, some of us went for a long swim. Silas took the kids on the hot dog.

There is a super cool sandbar that we went to last year. This year, I found inner tubes on sale at Target, so I stocked up! We loaded up the tubes, dragged the kids on the hot dog, and headed over for an afternoon of relaxing, frisbee, drinks, floating, and chillin’. After we had been there for quite a while, the sky started to get a little dark, so we headed back to the cabin and did a mad-dash clean up- bringing chairs and everything else into the cabin in case of rain.

Once we got everything secure inside, we all headed to a little restaurant nearby to get pizza for dinner. The rain didn’t let up, so when we got back, I brought out an emergency stash of lego kits (I was prepared in case either of my boys needed quiet time away from everyone) and most of the kids piled in one room to lego. Toaster oven s’mores were just as yummy as over a fire, and we had plenty of other treats as well. Eventually we put the kids to bed (even in the rain, our tents all held up nicely, although I think it helped that we all had air mattresses that kept us off the ground and completely dry). We stayed up late playing games and relaxing- it didn’t matter that we were in a circle of chairs inside, rather than around a campfire.

On Sunday morning, we did more tubing, swimming, a campy craft project, and all agreed that we might need to extend camp by another day next year. It was just too much fun to only have Friday-Sunday.