Grandma Camp 2021 finally happened after rescheduling four times for various reasons that couldn’t be helped. We used our same tents from last year, with a new name wreath, and garland in the front opening. It was nice to know they have survived an entire year of fun and enjoyment! I also used a different light inside this year since most of the girls have their macramé chandelier from 2020 hanging up in their rooms, which I LOVE!

This year was plagued with issues from the start, but I was not willing to let them get in the way of us having a good time and making memories. Even when things don’t go according to plan, you can always come up with a plan B, or C, or D, or more . . . which is kind of what happened this year!

I had planned 2021 to be based around a water theme, but in light of the historic drought here in Utah, I didn’t feel good about staking out the 75 foot, double wide, water slide I ordered back in January. I had also ordered the cutest heart shaped blow-up swimming pool for each girl to have her own. Not only would we have wasted too many gallons of precious water, but our already yellow-turning-to-brown grass would have turned into a mud slide.

Thankfully a kind neighbor let us come and use her pool to swim for a couple hours. I had ordered the cutest blow-up flower shaped tubes for the girls to play with in the pool. Ron blew them up using his air compressor the night before, and sadly the next morning two of them were showing withering signs of a leak. Thankfully I had ordered two extra, so I had him blow them up. By the time we got to the pool, one of those was withering as well. You’d think I’d learn NOT to count on things like this, but for some reason I’ve always loved them for the pool. The girls were good sports about it though, and by the time Grandma Camp was over, Amazon had already delivered new replacements.

We started with lunch from Subway picked up and delivered by Grandpa Ronnie – he honestly is the best, and I couldn’t do what I do without his help and support!!! After they ate, they opened their Grandma Camp kits, settled into their tents, and then we got ready to go swimming. I ordered round shaped swim towels on Amazon with fun prints on them specifically suited to each grandchild. Some had dolphins, some had turtles, and one had a unicorn. These are 70” round towels that could also be used as a table cloth or a beach blanket in the future. Thankfully I had planned for a two hour swim time and that turned out to be just about perfect, especially considering that about the time we got back to the house, the air suddenly turned smoky from all the fires in Oregon and California.

Getting everyone bathed and dressed again took a little bit of time, but the good thing about Grandma Camp is that we aren’t in a hurry. We just do what we want on a very loose schedule, the goal here is to have fun and make memories. I have extra activities and games planned and ready in case I need them, but always end up with more than we have time for.

Our first craft was a silhouette of each girl that I had cut previously from black cardstock. One of the things I always wanted to do at Disneyland when I was little was to have my silhouette cut. As you walk down Main Street in Disneyland there was a lady on the right hand side about half way down the street who did these. My mom didn’t like them, and so I never had one done. I went online a few years ago and learned how to do them for a different project I was working on at the time. Looking back, I wish I would have cut one every year of each of my kids and included that in a scrapbook. I had originally planned to do all our Grandma Camp crafts outside on the back covered patio, but due to hundred degree heat and the smoky air, we had to quickly improvise and make room to do our crafts inside. The front entry way ended up being the perfect place. These silhouettes are simple and fun to do by just taking a side profile picture on your phone, importing it to your computer, adjusting it to fit the frame you want to put the silhouette in, then place the printed copy of the photo over a piece of black cardstock, and cut it out. There are tutorials online that are extremely helpful. I bought the cute heart shaped double glass frames from World Market. If you are making one for a boy, they have similar frames that are rectangle shaped. I also ordered real dried flowers from Amazon that came with a small pair of tweezers to pick the delicate flowers up with. I had already prepped the frame by cleaning the glass really good, and placing the pre-cut silhouette in the center using glue dots. The girls got to arrange their flowers however they wanted, and then glued them in place with a small dot of Clear Tacky Glue. We then let them sit overnight to dry. I was a little nervous my five year old would have a hard time with the tweezers, but she surprised me, she handled them like a pro!

Part of each girl’s Grandma Camp Kit was a rose gold metal and clear make-up case that was meant to be used as a place to keep all their crafting supplies. I ordered these on Amazon, and they were a hit with every camp participant! I personalized each one using vinyl names cut on my Silhouette Cameo machine. As we finished each craft, the girls put any extra materials they had left over into their make-up/craft case. These little girls love to craft, and taking home a case full of extra things is a bonus.

I had set the Rhodes Bread Dough out to thaw at about noon so that it would be ready for the traditional “Grandpa Ronnie home-made pizzas” for dinner. Each girl gets ½ loaf of bread dough and a metal pie tin sprayed with PAM cooking oil. They get to choose what toppings they want to put on their individual pizzas. We cook them on 375 degrees until the edges are lightly browned and the cheese is melted. These are always a hit, and we do them more than once a year with the kids and grandkids. We have two ovens, and are able to cook three pizzas at a time in each oven. So six pizzas get done at the same time.

After dinner we got our jammies on and watched our first movie inside our tents – the new Disney movie “Luca”. We were too full to do popcorn during the first movie, and I still had our “Special Custom Treat” to do. Macrons that I drove all the way to Alpine, Utah to pick up two weeks prior from “Madison Baking Company”. You can find her on Instagram, and she is crazy talented. I’ve had macrons in France from Ladauree, and Madison’s macaroons are just as good!!! This is another one of the things I had to improvise on. The night before the second rescheduled Grandma Camp, one family got sick. I already had the custom initial aqua colored, coconut flavored macrons and had to call Madison to find out if I could freeze them for a couple weeks. Luckily, macrons actually freeze very well for a few months even, but I had to go and buy individual airtight Tupperware containers to put each macron letter cake in. I pulled them out of the freezer earlier in the day and they were ready to serve after the first movie. I had blush pink heart shaped paper plates to put each “Macaroon initial cake” on in addition to 10 mini macron cookies around each letter to fill up the plate. I had also made home-made peach ice cream using an easy recipe from Martha Stewart that I made one Sunday prior and the girls really liked it. The recipe calls for six cups fresh peaches frozen in a simple sugar mixture, one can sweetened condensed milk, then just blend it all up in a blender. I had matching blush pink cups and rose gold, heart shaped, metal spoons for them to eat the ice cream with. Doesn’t that sound like the PERFECT Grandma Camp treat?!!!! Well now let me tell you what happened . . . I also found the tiniest little heart shaped sparklers and thought how fun it would be to put one in each little macron initial cake!!! The hearts were only about an inch in diameter. I told the girls to be sure NOT to touch the sparkler at all because it would be HOT – especially after it finished sparking. Everything was going great until I began to light the fourth sparkler . . . we were singing a made up song to the tune of Happy Birthday, but changed the words to Happy Grandma Camp instead . . . this is when one of the girls forgot, and tried to take her sparkler out of her macron. Luckily she let go quickly and didn’t get a serious burn, but it scared her so bad that she knocked her ice cream off the counter and it went all over her, the chair, and the floor. Then she swiveled off her bar stool and fell on the floor! This is about the same time the smoke alarms started going off all throughout the house!!! And yes!!! They are LOUD!!! With sirens blaring and yelling the words “Fire! Fire! Fire!” I grabbed Brynn and took her to the sink to put her fingers under cold water and get her cleaned off, while Ron opened up all the doors and windows to clear the smoke out from the sparklers. The other three girls were looking at all of this in shock, not knowing what to think!!! Oakley is now 13 and was such a huge help with everything we did. She helped hold Brynn at the sink while I got the burn gel and applied it to Brynn’s fingers. I sat and held her for a while until she calmed down. By this time, no one really felt like having a treat. So we removed all the sparklers, put them in a glass of water just to be safe, boxed the macrons back up, and put the ice cream in the freezer for a later time. Thankfully, Brynn didn’t even have any red marks on her fingers, I think it scared her more than anything. So we all just got in our tents and watched another movie until we fell asleep . . .

As I laid in my tent thinking about ALL the things that had NOT gone according to my carefully laid plans, I chose NOT to dwell on them. Things happen even when we do our best to make sure everything we do comes out how we hope and plan for. I tried to think about all the things that DID go well. We had conserved a lot of water, the girls had written a heartfelt thank you to my neighbor who let us come and swim, we had a yummy lunch and dinner, a treat none of us will EVER forget (a word to the wise, don’t EVER light sparklers inside your house . . . no matter how small they are), and we all slept REALLY well that night after a very full day of activities. My Grandma Camp goal is not to necessarily remember WHAT we did, but that we make MEMORIES of doing things together in LOVE!!! We DID create a little more LIGHT than I had planned with our indoor sparkler incident, but now we can all look back and laugh about Grandma Les’ crazy treat idea!!! I think next year, I will simplify and just make a Texas Sheetcake.

Next week’s post will finish up the second day of Grandma Camp 2021. Many people look at me and think EVERYTHING I do turns out perfectly . . . oh if they only knew . . . After reading this, I hope you had a few good laughs, and know that even when things don’t go according to our plans, it’s not the end of the world! We can STILL find ways to see the LIGHT, have fun, and enjoy making memories together - and that’s a BLESSING!!!

Love Ya, Les ☺

Family

Grandma Camp 2021 – Part One