Camp Mom: Day 44

[My son's summer-camp this year is a do-it-yourself affair with a couple of friends from his special-ed class hanging out at our house. I'll post a run-down of our activities daily, for others who may be looking for ideas. If you're doing something fun, too, please share it in the comments.]

Today, our next-to-last camp day, turned out to be Playground Day. We resolved to drive from park to park in our park-heavy town, seeking an elusive quarry: a playground with four big-kid swings instead of two big-kid swings and two bucket swings (like the ones pictured).

The two-two combo seems to be standard in our smaller parks, with more regular swings available only at larger parks, which also have more kids to compete with for them. That was our experience on Monday -- four swings, others wanting to use them. Yesterday, we had a small park all to ourselves, but only two swings to go among our four campers, who take turns nicely but would rather not have to.

So this morning: First park, two-two, and overrun with rugrats at that. Second park, just two big kids swings and no little kid swings, deserted but passed by us. By the time we got to the third park, which was a two-two, we were too too tired to keep driving so stopped to play awhile. The jungle gym wasn't great, though, and the swing-waiting got old, so we loaded up again and went to a fourth park, which was again a two-two but had a rockin' jungle gym that caused the swings to go unused a time or two. We finally left because it was too darn hot, and will resume our swing searching tomorrow.

Back home, the house became a playground of toy food and toy trucks. The campers amused themselves endlessly with them, and the moms let them, recovering as we were from sun exposure (another thing missing in our local park: benches in the dang shade!) They broke their play a few times to make pictures with stickers, do homework, play a money game, and write in journals, but it was mostly a peaceful, play-together day. And now, just one more left.