Birthday Blast A Celebration of Life

An exciting summer week started for our family on Sunday night, especially for Sloan and Sidney. We attended the kickoff event for Catholic Summer Camp. We ate dinner, learned about the week’s events, and attended mass as a big group. We also became acquainted with this year’s theme, because you can’t have vacation bible school without that perfect theme, right? Well, this year the theme is “Birthday Blast: A Celebration of Life.” But more on that in just a minute.

Beau and Sloan look at the large birthday cake at the kickoff event for St. Mary’s Catholic Summer Camp.

As I said, it is a big week for Sloan. She is a camper and is part of the Kindergarten class. Our daughter could not stop talking about last year’s Catholic Summer Camp so you can imagine she was pretty excited to begin this year’s version. After two days, she is absolutely loving it! To be reunited with a lot of her St. Mary classmates and to meet new children has been fun for her. Also, Sloan never met a craft she didn’t like. Best of all, she is absorbing the material being taught and is sharing it with me in an enthusiastic way when she returns home in the afternoon.

Sidney and Sloan pose for a photo with their camp shirts prior to their first day on Monday.

But if you didn’t doze on that opening paragraph, you probably noticed that I said it was an “especially” big week for Sid as well. That is because she is a camp teacher this year! Sid wanted to volunteer and when she expressed her desire to the camp director, she was asked if she had any experience leading large groups of children. When my wife responded that she was an elementary teacher, the director responded that Sid was “the answer” to her prayers and asked if she would teach the third-grade class. Sid answered in the affirmative.

It has been a joy to watch Sid jump back on that teaching bicycle and handle a group of third graders this week. Prior to Sunday night, Sid worked extremely hard to decorate her classroom, become familiar with the camp curriculum, and plan for activities with her class. It is also inspiring to see my wife so on fire with her Catholic faith that she volunteered to teach it to others.

This is Sid’s third grade classroom for Catholic Summer Camp.

Okay, back to the theme. This year it is “Birthday Blast: A Celebration of Life.” The children are learning how to discover, respect, protect, serve, and celebrate God’s great gift of life. It is all about human dignity! The theme was decided way in advance of current events so the timing is coincidental. But regardless, we are thankful that Sloan is being exposed to such an important message at an early age.