10 years of k.kamp!

This summer, 2012, marked the tenth summer in a row that I have carefully planned and packed craft and game supplies and two weeks worth of clothes and headed across my beautiful state to exit 19, which is when I begin to get really excited to see some of my favorite people and arrive at my favorite spot on earth.  If you have never heard the story about how Kathryn Kamp got started, click here. (Let me just clarify...I did NOT name it after myself! lol The kids that I first had started referring to it as that and it somehow kinda stuck.  Just fyi...)

I will get to pics of this summer's camp, but first I just had to take a minute to look back at how my k.kamp kids have grown over the years. (And just a warning...some of the pics are from older cameras or "borrowed" from fbook so the quality isn't the greatest on them. Oh well.)  There are a few who came for the first time last year and I will introduce you to them in the next post, but for now, let me introduce you to my k. kampers!

Abby is one of my "almost nieces".  I have known her since she was kicking her mama's belly. :)  She has her dad's personality and can be quiet, loves to read, and goes on a walk alone at least once every year just to get away from everyone for a little while and recharge. :}  She is very careful to never take advantage of anyone and is kind and thoughtful and always reminds everyone to say thank you for anything anyone does for k.kamp.  She and I are completely different in most everything we like - music, movies, celebrities, our personalities, etc. But we have found our bond in photography - she is an excellent photographer and has even entered and won a prize for one of her photos!  I love her to pieces. :)

Em is happy and cheerful and not dramatic at all (...).  She is a faithful k.kamper and promises she will never leave me. (I hope not!!)  She is amazing in the kitchen and makes a killer apple pie that won in a competition over a "real" chef! (Thanks to her aunt's pie recipe!)  She is wise beyond her years sometimes when it comes to topics like boys, modesty, and her faith....but she also knows how to be silly and goofy and makes me laugh!

This is Clairebear. She may not really like being called that anymore, but I can still get away with it once in a while.  :)  Claire is spunky and also happy almost all the time.  She is one of my two girls who are sort of in the middle age-wise so since she is the youngest of three girls and gets bossed around a lot of the time, she enjoyed this year having the job of keeping the kids occupied during meal prep times and bossing them around for a change!  :)  

EP is my nick name for Evan.  Always has been.  Probably always will be. :)  Evan, as you can see, was just 6 months old the first time I came for camp.  My baby.  I can remember staying in his room with him in a crib.  In the mornings he would wake up and see me "asleep" in my bed and start talking to me.  I would keep my eyes shut as long as I could stand it (dude would wake up at 6am and I am NOT a morning person!) until I couldn't hold in a giggle anymore and would get up and bring him back to bed to snuggle with me.  He would lay there happily for 30 minutes or so while I woke up. This summer since he didn't technically stay for k.kamp but instead worked with the big guys around camp during the day, I wondered if he was too cool for me now.  He asked one night if I would save him and another boy some of the dessert I was making.  I told him I would if he gave me a really big hug! He save me a wimpy side hug with one arm and I told him that did NOT count so he stopped what he was doing and - in front of his (slightly older) friend - came and bear hugged me tight.  Melt my heart! He still loves me.  ;)  He and I bonded this year over the animal planet channel in the evenings - we both like the show River Monsters and a couple others. I think he thought it was kinda cool that I liked those shows too. :)

Claudia is a cousin of the above kids.  She has gone from a cute little girl to a beautiful cheerleader.  She was my first "extra" k.kamper and made a great addition to my little group at the time.  Since then she has been a great helper.  She and the other cousins who you will meet in just a minute didn't come this year and were definitely missed! (This is the problem with working with kids...they grow up on you! :-p)

I only had Tyler for a few years. (Right photo here and below borrowed from fbook...and Kimberly...you need more pics of your boys!! I had to steal these from TKZ's page! lol)  His family now lives at camp and oversees the Potter's house ministry.  He is all boy and of course has to maintain his cool guy image...but I discovered last summer that he is a total softy when it comes to little kids!  He came over on his own a couple afternoons last summer and instead of hanging out with the other four boys I had that were closer to his age, I found him in the girls room playing with my little girls - letting them climb all over him and making them crack up laughing.  :)

Jax is Tyler's little brother.  He has always been a trouper at k.kamp - I have gotten him to willingly do things I really didn't know if he would - like wear a purple k.kamp tshirt and be on a team with a girl for one of the longer games we played.  Since he now lives at camp, he works with the big guys during the day and stays at his house at night...but I still get to see him around camp.  :)

Kaitlynd, Bethanie, and Laurel (bottom photos borrowed from fbook) are three more cousins of my original four kiddos.  Kaitlynd was always sweet and kind. Bethanie is passionate. And Laurel is a sweetheart. 

Kirsten is precious!  She is kind to everyone. She might tend to get kind of embarrassed kind of easily and it might be kind of fun to tease her a little bit sometimes... ;)  (a particular small child's bath comes to mind...)  She's always a good sport about it though.  :)   

Lyd is my other "middle" child.  She is a lot of fun to hang out with!  She did an excellent job with Claire this year entertaining the littles for us at times.  She has the happiness of her birthday falling during camp every summer and this year she is officially a teenager!  (and Lyd...I still love that headband...it's just so cute on you!) :)

Tug. Oh my. He is ALL BOY!! But he is very polite and always remembers to say yes ma'am and no ma'am.  He is very empathetic and one year I just had him and Evan and Ev was missing his parents and started crying one day...and Tug felt so bad for him he started crying right along with him!  :)  Tug's family also lives at camp and his parents are the caretakers.

Kaileybug is brave and outgoing.  She first came to k.kamp when she was just 2 - it was scary to be left with people you don't know in a place you aren't familiar with! But after a few initial tears, she was good to go and has loved it ever since!  

Sweet Sophia is the daughter of my friend Jewel, who was my co-counselor when I was a camp counselor in highschool!  Last year was her first year at k.kamp and is officially my youngest k.kamper ever but babies change so much in just one year that I had to add her to this list.  :)  She is completely adorable and so much fun!  (and yes, that is her in my blog header at the top of the page.)  

So these are most of the kids I have every summer!  Like I said, there are a couple more I will introduce you to in the next post.  I also have had Lauren come and help me for the past few years but if you have read this blog for very long at all then you already know who she is.  :)

After both weeks of camp were over, Abby had made a "10 years of k.kamp" slideshow and we all watched it together.  She did an awesome job! and if I could get it to upload anywhere, I would share it with you, but it is 22 minutes long and no where that I can find will let me upload a video that big! :-p Oh well.  After the video, I got a very sweet gift! Check it out...

On the other side of the heart it says 10 years.  They also gave me a small jewelry box but I don't have a picture of it.

Yup. That's about right.  :}

**have a comment about all my cute kids?? just post it below instead of leaving it on fbook!  it's more fun to find it here! lol**

sami

When my grandmother had her stroke in the middle of June, it took only a little over 24 hours for my mom's three sisters to arrive here and just a couple days later, my cousins Hamzah and Farah arrived with their sweetheart Sami.  I hadn't gotten to meet him yet and I discovered it takes exactly one huge smile for him to completely wrap himself around your little finger!  :}  He was most definitely a happy bright spot in the midst of the sadness of saying goodbye to my grandmother. I mean seriously, how can you not smile and be happy with this little guy around...

I pulled out my camp swimming pool for Sami to cool off in one hot afternoon...of course the rest of us hung out and sweated while he enjoyed the cold water! ha.

Oh my heavens he is precious!!  :}

:D 

Hamzah is one of my two "baby" cousins and two of the ones I'm closest to.  Farah is his wife and I am so thankful she is now in our family!  She is so much fun to spend time with and I < 3 her!

I'm so glad y'all got to come spend some time down here and that you will be in the states for a while!  Hopefully you can come back soon - and hopefully I will get up there to see you too!  :)

**Ok, I am officially caught up!!!  Now I can move on to July posts! HAHA!! Ok, so i'm not actually caught up technically but anyways... camp posts coming soon!**

most dangerous job

Being a nanny is one of the most dangerous jobs ever. Why? Because you can't help but fall in love with the children in your care...but then there is always an eventual goodbye to a nanny job and you risk having your heart broken when you are no longer with your kids every week anymore (especially when you know the future goodbye could have an ocean separating you, not just a city!).  :-p  But it is by far worth the time spent and memories made...just a little rough at times.  :}

I miss my three kids every single day and pray for them often by name.  After about a month of not seeing them, my heart starts aching.  After 6 weeks, I usually start tearing up when I think about or pray for them.  After three months?!  I get desperate!  :-p

Three months is the longest we have ever been apart and I refuse to let that happen again!  This past week I was dying to see them and happened to be driving by their neighborhood on Wednesday and decided to stop by to see if they were by any chance at home.  They of course weren't, so I wrote a note on their glass door with window crayons letting them know I stopped by and that I loved them.

That evening I got a phone call from their dad saying Mr. Happy wanted to talk to me and was that ok? (um, ya think?!)  My MH got on the phone hiccup-crying and said "kiki...i thought i might never see you again!!" He then chatted with me for half an hour about all kinds of little boy stuff.  :)  It was then that I decided I had had enough.  I knew from talking to him and his sisters that night that they were going to day camp that week at their school. I knew about what time their mom usually picks them up and decided I was going to get there 20 or so minutes before that and just sit there with them until she came!  

Thursday morning I put a fbook status telling about the above phone call and how much I wanted to see my kids and I had five or six people say they were praying I would get to see them. 

That afternoon I was sitting in my friend's living room catching up after being gone for a few weeks when I got a text from my kids mom saying "hey, I know this is really last minute but would you want to pick the kids up from day camp and take them out to eat?"  I answered back "HECK YES!!!"  She called me real quick and mentioned "I don't know why I didn't think of it before, but it just popped into my head just now to see if you wanted to do that." 

Hahaha!  Wendy, it's not a coincidence that thought popped into your head - God gave you that thought - as a result of my prayers and the prayers of my sweet friends who knew how badly I wanted to see my kids!  :)  

I love picking him up! This isn't his first reaction - he had seen me but had to go get his backpack.  The first moment he did see me and it registered who I was, his mouth dropped open before a huge grin spread across his sweet face.  :) More about that later.

 FINALLY!!!  

Talking to him on the phone was great and I loved hearing his voice, but there is nothing like feeling his cheek against mine and having his arms wrapped around my neck!  :)

(Big Brother wraps his arms around my neck sometimes too...I love little boys!)

My sweet and silly girlies!! They were too far away when I picked them up to get a picture of when they first saw me.  They were looking for mommy's red car and then thought maybe my car was their daddy's because we have similar looking cars.  It wasn't until I got out and called their names that I heard Little Miss Sunshine squeal "KIKI!!!" and both girls ran as fast as they could across the field where they were playing.  :)

We went to Red Robins for dinner - one of our favorite special treat places.  :)  Then we headed downtown to the fountains at the World's Fair Park.  Another one of our favorite spots.

Another one of my happy spots...just chillin' with my kids.  :)

I love this pic because his little chubby cheek gives him just a little hint of baby look still, even though he's a big 5 year old.  :)

Bridal shoot at the fountains!  She was wearing cowboy boots under her dress and it looked so cute!  :)

Two kids in my lap! :)  Little Miss Giggles was busy drawing funny pictures for us. 

Goofy boy. :) 

She's my sweetheart. :)  And is getting to be so grown up.

(stop that LMS!!) :) 

She cracks me up!  And that makes her happy - to make other people laugh.  :)

Ok so this isn't the actual moment I picked him up from day camp but I've said before that I would love to try to get a picture of his reaction and this is the same reaction i get when he sees that it's me - huge grin, yells "KIKI!!!!!!", runs full force and jumps into my arms (which is getting trickier since he's not as little as he used to be! lol).  This is him practicing his "kiki run" as he called it. :} ♥

I just realized yesterday that he left his lunch box and LMS left her notebook in my car...that means I will have to get them back to them soon....oh darn!  :D

june recap: the boys :)

June means hot and getting hotter so we spent a lot of time playing with water in any and every way!  In my opinion, it is not worth being outside when it's that hot unless you are wet!  :)

 June also brings Big Brother's birthday! He is now officially two years old!

 He used to (actually still does sometimes) carry around a roll of contact paper and would pretend it was his guitar...so I decided he needed his very own real guitar (never mind the fact that technically it's a ukulele...).  

 Playing in the pool...lots of book reading...and red velvet pancakes for breakfast because Kiki had them at IHOP one day and had to try to make them...soo yummy!

 Thank you Pinterest! This simple "duh!" idea was a huge hit and I even used it later at camp! Take a pan and pour baking soda over the bottom.  Color some vinegar and use a dropper (we used a spoon since big brother couldn't quite figure out how to use the dropper yet) and pour little bits of vinegar on the baking soda! It of course makes wonderful little colorful fizzy spots and watching the colors mix together is way fun! Then of course you have to put your hand in it at the end and mix it all up! Warning: it will turn your hand pink...doesn't look like it, but it will! But only for a few hours. :)

 This is one of my favorite kid activities - peanut butter playdough!! It is ridiculously easy to make and tastes like peanut butter fudge - seriously!  :)  Click here for the post that has the recipe in it.

 Random fun times. :)

 More pool time!!

This is our June sensory box.  So far, this one is my absolute favorite!  I love love the feeling of those water beads!!  I think I would love to fill an entire shallow pool with them and just wade around in them! lol  They are so cool and slippery.  This month we have little ocean animals and boats to play with.  So fun!

And before I left for camp, I decided I needed some "real" pics of the boys to show off...