COUSIN CAMP REFLECTIONS - Munner
We started Cousin’s Camp as a fun way to spend special Grandparent time with our posterity. We wanted to create loving memories of important, small, good experiences in life as the generation of Cousins gathered at our home on Springloch Court, Silver Spring, MD. We wanted them to become a cohesive group of good friends who belonged to each other.
We started as campers with new little pup tents set up in the back yard. But as the first night came and they started missing home, we quickly realized camping was not going to be a happy experience in our back yard. We packed everything up and went inside and continued our camp experience year after year by bringing their own sleeping bag which was used on a bed or floor in our bedrooms. Whitney told me recently how comforting it was at bedtime that I would sing “Lullaby” to the cousins as a wave of home sickness hit them. As first-time camp directors, we quickly learned that age four was too young for Cousins Camp and the next year the age was raised to five, and then the next year, the age requirement was six. Ah, that worked better and remained!
What are the remembered highlights of Cousins Camp? Here are just a few that come to mind: starting the day all assembled on the front porch putting up the flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance; trips to Noyes Children’s Library in Kensington to pick out as many books as possible for quiet reading time; picnics at Wheaton Regional Park to play for hours on their great equipment; visit and tour of Fire Station for a up-close look at the shiny red trucks; a trip to the bank and into the vault to see our safe deposit box which held their birthday bonds for safe keeping — (yes, they really did exist); burying a time capsule of special treasures in the front flower bed — Kraig came over before we moved to dig it up, but sadly in spite of plastic box and tons of tape, those treasures had been destroyed by water through the years; making, designing, painting our annual Cousins Camp shirt. (Our dining room table was our activity center and to this day has camp paint on it)
The addition of bringing bikes to camp added a whole new layer of adventure racing down the hill and around the circle at high speeds—Munner claims half of her white hair came from camp biking, but thankfully the biking angels were on duty and we never had an ER trip; the kindness of our neighbors, The Whitings and then The Pontons, who invited all of our enthusiastic swimmers for afternoon swims; Papa’s special lessons on diving techniques; service projects; our annual trip to the Temple Visitors Center and a special peek inside the House of the Lord (and even at those young ages having the cousins feel “something different” about actually being in the temple); the growing need to have two sessions of camp with the Senior and Junior campers with expanded metro and Air and Space explorations; discovering and exploring a secret room in our basement storage area; learning from Papa “to leave everybody and everything better than we found them.”
A big part of camp was Munner with her camera capturing as much of the fun, and sweetness of it all as possible...then the whole experience was made into an annual Christmas camp album for each cousin, along with a special enlarged photo for each...which seemed to extend the whole experience even longer.
We felt that Cousins Camp was one of the best things we ever did together. We regret that as our families moved out of the area and your camp directors ran out of steam, that the younger half of our posterity didn’t have the Cousins Camp experience. For me, and I feel Papa would agree, the highlight of Papa’s amazing weekend celebration in October 2019 was our Friday night Pizza Party at the Villa Clubhouse...... that was the best Senior Cousins Camp gathering ever!!! I shall always treasure the feelings of joy, peace, love, kindness, family, fun, cooperation, unity...a true glimpse of Heaven.....yes, “All Chairs Full.”
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