Ziploc Bag Packing, Shower and Tooth loss Drama

My 2 oldest kids have been at overnight church camp for 2 nights.  See!  I DO send my kids to camp, a little, if you count sleeping on air mattresses at the church and getting to go on crazy field trips like laser tag, as camp, which our church totally does for 3rd through 5th graders.

The kids needed swimsuits, pajamas, and extra changes of clothes because they were going to have some messy fun.  I organized everything in Ziploc bags for them, which is my new favorite way to pack:

I did all our stuff in Ziplocs first and then put it inside our suitcases for our recent mission trip to the Dominican Republic, mostly to keep out the bugs, but it made for so much less digging through the suitcases which I always hate!  Not to mention I could squeeze the air out and get the stuff really compact.

I just KNOW my 10 year old son felt really cool in his roomful of 30 other boys when he opened his bag at camp and all his clothes looked like this:

I did find a kindred spirit, though, when I giggled to another mom of a 10 year old boy at camp drop-off that I'd packed my son's clothes in Ziploc bags, she said, "ME TOO!"  And then she lamented that when her son went away for 1 week camp earlier in the summer she had clearly labeled each Ziploc with the day the outfit was to be worn on, you know, so he'd fit in with the day's theme, like Hawaiian Day.  But, she noticed from the pictures that he wore the outfits on the wrong days!  Honestly, we moms are doing our best for these boys, but there is a level of cluelessness that even a Ziploc and a Sharpie marker cannot cure!

I am fully expecting my son to come home with only about 30% of the stuff I sent him to camp with.

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How much do I love that my 10 year son stuck a book into his bag at the last minute?!!

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So, I've had a few days with just these 2 superheroes:

Which is fine!  They are THE BEST of friends without the older siblings around to complicate things!  Seriously, they have been so sweet to each other, it's like they get that there is no other kid around to play with so they'd better work it out!  Those 2 are my extroverts who prefer a playmate to playing alone. 

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Did you notice anything different about Little Girl's smile?

She lost a bottom tooth yesterday!  A bottom tooth she desperately needed to lose because the permanent teeth have already come in behind it.  She's scheduled to have some bottom teeth pulled at the dentist on Monday morning, so praise God for one less she'll have to get pulled!!

It's a crazy story, though, the tooth loss.  I needed to drop the big kids at camp in an hour, we'd just gotten home from some errands where the 2 little kids were terrible, so they were sitting in some "think about it time".  I was doing some last minute packing for the big kids and simultaneously making dinner to feed everyone before heading to the church.  I sent my 7 year old daughter upstairs to shower because they wouldn't be showering for the 2 nights at camp and I figured better to go freshly showered.  She started screaming that there was something wrong and water was spraying all over the bathroom.  I raced upstairs and sure enough there was water everywhere!  I fixed the shower sprayer issue just as my 4 year old little girl started SHRIEKING from her spot in "thinking time" downstairs, "I broke my tooth!  I BROKE MY TOOTH!"  I raced downstairs to her bloody mouth.  She handed me the tooth and I was relived to see it all intact and not at all broken, but had just come out like it needed to!

But, really, the chaos?  Couldn't we just shower and lose teeth without all the drama?!

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Happy Friday, Friends!

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