off to camp and rock and roll...

Oh my gosh, if I don't finally post this post, I'll be writing an essay about what I did on my summer vacation.

It's just that this unemployed nothing to do summer has gotten itself very busy.

Sam is off to camp. Though, because he's pretty much the easiest kid in the family, life is just quieter, not less hectic. But even Tali says that she's totally bored without someone to pinch and fight with. Nice.

We spent the day last Thursday packing and gathering his stuff and while it was admirable that Sam wanted to pack his own bags, when I did my minor last minute check, I discovered he'd paid no attention to the numbers of items the camp suggested he bring. As in, instead of ten shirts, he packed five.

"You only have five shirts and it says ten," I say. "What are you going to do for the second half of camp?"

"You don't need to change your shirt everyday at camp," Sam tells me. "You're supposed to be dirty at camp."

"You don't know how dirty you're going to get. What if run you out of shirts?"

"Mom, last year I wore the same shirt practically everyday. I don't need so many of them. It just wastes water in washing them," he says, though I threw in five more shirts. And, oddly, when I look at the camp photos online, he seems to be wearing pretty much the same shirt everyday. What a sweet guy to be saving his mom the laundry and mother earth her water? Hmmm...

Also, last weekend I ran the Seattle Rock and Roll marathon and hit my goal time of under two hours at 1:57. I was pretty psyched and it was great to run with the group I'd been training with. There were 25,000 people running this race, but I think it was fairly well planned because it didn't feel like that many people.

This is us at 4am catching the shuttle to Tukwila, which for you out of towners is absolutely NOT Seattle.

Then, while the shuttles worked their way back to Seattle, we ran back. But it really was a nice route.

Here we are after the race. Note the team shirt not sponsored by Nike--just printed on their shirts. On the back we printed "Run like a Mutha..." which spurred a lot of conversation behind our backs while we ran.

"What's a Moota?" one woman asked. We didn't tell her that we'd used the spelling "Mutha" because Mitch didn't want to run with a shirt that said he ran like a mother.

Off to go send a care package like a good mother... Though at this point I'm sending it next day so that he at least gets it before he gets on the bus to come home.