September 2
Camp Sunrise! A place to shine!
Our family got to go to Camp Sunrise at Trout Lodge for the entire Labor Day weekend. The American Cancer Society sponsors families of children with cancer and sends them to camp for the weekend. A doctor and several nurses are there as well, just in case. The whole purpose of the camp is to let kids with cancer be kids, and let families in similar situations be together.
We had a ball! We arrived at Trout Lodge late Friday night, and we were on the go the entire time. While we were there, we did so many different things. One of the favorites was feeding this fish. The fish were HUGE! We would go to the end of the deck and throw food to them. Ally would throw a handful at a time. Benjamin would throw just one piece at a time. We played Blazing Paddles (ping pong to you and me) - I would put Ally on the table and help her hit the ball back to Brad. Benjamin was content to hold the paddle and sit and watch while lounging in the stroller. There’s a playgound…lots of swinging and teeter tottering - a huge hit! The camp has an arts and crafts center. We spent about a hour and a half there. The kids both painted a ceramic piece, colored/glittered/painted on paper, and made tie-dye T-shirts (my favorite). Ally was the first to make her shirt (with some help from daddy). Benjamin kept saying, “I squeeze! I squeeze!” - He wanted to squeeze paint onto a T-shirt too, so we let him make one also. We did LOTS of walking around the grounds…Ally went on a pontoon boat ride. She liked it until a group of older kids threw water balloons at the boat. That scared her, so she cried the rest of the ride. — They both loved the “camp room”. We all stayed together in the lodge/hotel room. It actually worked out really well. Benjamin slept in the pack-n-play, and Ally slept on a mattress on the floor beside our bed.
We all had a great time together as a family! Ally keeps saying she wants to go to camp again. Hopefully we get another opportunity!