Marshmallow in her hair

I’ve had a first happen to me last night.  My children came to me and asked, “Can we please take a shower? We’re dirty!”  And it was so true.  May 9.10 even had marshmallow in her hair.  They came by that dirt very honestly.  We’re visiting a state park in Ohio with a multitude of relatives.  Grandma and Grandpa have their camper and so do aunts, uncles, cousins.  There are a few tents, including the one we brought just as a play tent for the kids to use (that they are loving!).

And kids… many, lots of, tons of, swarms of kids! It’s really awesome to have so many.  My family has reached a stage where most of my cousins have little ones.  There are a few in the ballpark of 10 years old and there are dozens that are more like 2-6.  We are situated in a piece of the campgrounds where 2 roads form a T and we have one corner below the T and part of the area above it.  A trio of campers forms and open area and fire pit surrounded by tents, a hammock, picnic tables and woods that sort of hems in the little ones, but there are constant dashes to grab the toddler from crossing the road, which thankfully isn’t too busy.  And all the cars know the whole campgrounds (not just us) is swarmed with kids.  The compound we form has several picnic tables, corn hole thingies (what to call those?), lawn chairs, big wheels, squirt guns, etc.  And this is an annual ritual that we’ve enjoyed for several years with our children.

So, they earned the dirt by throwing water balloons, running around the playground just up the  street whose main attraction is a merry-go-round that some kids sit (and hold on for dear life) and other kids run around pushing and then make mad jumps to board.  For the second evening in a row, the fire was used to roast marshmallows for s’mores (hence the marshmallow in the hair thing). 

When I was a child, this same side of my family always went to a state park for a week each summer and rented cabins.  We’d have a whole cul-de-sac of cabins that were all my relatives and we’d get together nightly in the center after each long day of swimming, playing cards, riding bikes…. I have fabulous memories of those trips.  I remember big family pot lucks at the end of each week to finish off all the odds and ends of food that each family had left before we’d pull out and head for home on Saturday morning.  I remember bicycle races.  I remember euchre tournaments until very, very past bedtime.  There were trips into town to find the local ice cream place – trips where we rode to the shop in the back of a pickup truck, freezing because we’d all hopped straight out of a pool to go.  It was our favorite time each year.

So, even though this isn’t exactly the same (the cabins which were pretty rough back then have been modernized to have a/c, phones, luxuries that now make them more expensive than my extended family can afford, so we’ve switched to the campgrounds), my heart thrills to think that my children will have some of the same memories that I have.  And their memories will also include a nightly shower in the camp bathhouse to make them at least somewhat suitable to meet the sheets on the beds in grandma’s camper!