happy campers

shalom is a hebrew word meaning peace, harmony, wholeness, completeness, prosperity, welfare and tranquility. it is a nice word, and the word seems very appropriately deployed as the name for a summer camp that james and ramona attended this month. camp shalom is an all-day camp out in the country side, run by the jewish federation, and hosted for kids of all faiths to come together and spend high quality time playing and laughing and swimming and making (and learning a little hebrew and little bit about jewish faith) (for example: they sang a song on family night that was entirely about how you shouldn't eat pigs, and they sang "hey pharoah pharoah, oh baby, let my people go, UH, yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah" and it was adorable).


i mean, that old testament stuff is the bread and butter of their lutheran sunday school and lives at the heart of lots of stories, but somehow james still managed to call this ark playground "moses' boat".....

i guess we still have some work to do.


they absolutely loved their 2 weeks at this amazing camp, and i can't believe they're big enough to spend all day at a camp but of course they are because i just have a warped view of reality through my big wet mom eyes.... sigh.


here are a few pictures from family night. i think this is the moment they were singing to us about pork.....or passover....



and here is ramona with her theater troupe (no lie: she signed up for play writing and acting as her special interest activity). they wrote, directed, costumed, staged and acted this 3 minute play for all the parents on family night. i was so proud of that shy little girl.




and then camp shalom made a little slide show from their camp session and if you look closely, you'll definitely see james and his maniacal grin.