Camp Mom Gets Wet

My kids have been after me all summer to take them to this legendary sprayground. It sounded great, although it is a bit far, and you KNOW how gas is this summer. But then, Stimey took her kids and it was not so great. Crowded and overrun with busloads of daycamps. I scratched it off put it at the bottom of the list.

I found another one, from this great article, by the fabulous (and so very cute) Jessica, that is much closer. But my campers would accept no substitute. Every day I tried to rally the troops to go check it out, they mutinied.

So the other day, I girded my loins (what the HECK IS that anyway), got everyone in bathing suits, grabbed our Costco-sized bag of trail mix and hit the road.

But first, I noticed the fuel light was on as I backed out of the driveway. (At least I wasn't already on the way, right?) We drove to the gas station. I pulled out my wallet and noticed that my credit card was missing. You know, my ONLY credit card. I remembered that I had used it at Kinkos to fax off our financial information and had probably left it in the machine. I tried to call Kinkos on my cell phone, but the phone was ringing and ringing and it was only 2 blocks away, so I pulled out of the gas station and drove up the road.

Kinkos had the card, thank God. I jumped back in the car to go BACK to the gas station and it started to sprinkle.

GOOD GOD! I finally get up the nerve to go to this sprayground, 45 minutes away and TODAY is the day it's actually going to finally rain. I thought it was going to be another one of those days.

I filled up the tank - $3.80 a gallon - wooo... a bargain! Makes those 45 minutes not seem so bad after all. We finally hit the road and got to the sprayground right around lunch time. The sky was overcast, but the rain never came.

It was crowded and there was definitely at least one camp there, but there were lots of lifeguard-type people enforcing the no running rule. mGuy and Little One were in heaven! It was perfect for their age. But the big kids (I had a friend of Big Guy with me) were bored after about 15 minutes.

"No problem!" I thought. Right next to the sprayground is a miniature golf course. I could let the big kids golf and still see them from the spray area. Great plan. Except that mGuy wanted to golf too and he needs some serious supervision. He had also gotten up at the butt-crack of dawn and was a loose cannon by this point.

So we all dried off and went golfing. It was fun for about 6 minutes. Then they started fighting. And bickering. And whining. And throwing clubs. And balls. There was wailing. And time outs. And the threat of leaving. And MY GOD it was hot as hell on that course. We were a group of sweaty, angry people by the time we were done.

No problem! We're right next to a sprayground! Let's go there and cool off!

And that's where the day completely turned around. The place had emptied out and we were practically the only ones there. It was cool and wet and I guess they had fought with each other as much as humanly possible for one day, because all of a sudden, they were ALL getting along and running and jumping and splashing in the water.

Two hours later, I had to drag their wet and pruney little bodies out of there. Score one for Camp Mom.

(Photo courtesy of MC-MNCPPC because Camp Mom forgot the camera.)