School was out on May 24 (no pics this year...sorry!) and I was off work May 26, the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. We headed up to the cabin in two cars, Scott towing the quad that he'd been working on. He had to come back for work on Tuesday, but the girls and I stayed on for a few more days.
We did some work on the place this weekend, moving some beds around--swapping Kelsey's queen mattress on a broken bed frame for our double and box spring on a perfectly good frame. Now we're sleeping on the queen on the floor while we plot building a platform bed for storage and she's got a bed that doesn't bang on the floor and wake us all up when she gets in and out of it! I also further culled the kitchen items (microwave in an off-grid cabin? nope!) and Scott did some work to clean up some electrical wiring he wasn't real comfortable with.
The girls did some building over the weekend, too. They took apart the broken bed frame (it was part of an old futon frame) and used it and a few scavenged boards to build a tree house! It was fun to watch them get so involved in a project!
At one point I did haul out the ladder and help them with the horizontal supports. It was either help or they get hurt and when you're hours from a hospital that's a real easy decision! It's so fun to watch kids get an idea and bring it into being. It's so easy to look at these pictures and think that this was a smooth and idyllic process. Nope. We had lots of opportunities to work through frustration, have discussions about communicating, and learn about the impact of tone of tone of voice on your message. Good life lessons and I have already seen the fruits of them in some conversations I have listened to between them. Parenting big kids is so fun! It is challenging as well, don't get me wrong, but it is very rewarding at the same time.
I am reading this book right now which I absolutely recommend to anyone who works with or is parenting girls over 10. Mine aren't quite there yet, but I can see glimpses of it coming and see it daily in girls I work with. I love the respectful tone of the book. So much of our culture is down on teens, but we were all there once and we all turned out to be fairly decent human beings. Is it any wonder that teens are down on us when we're down on them? Not a real great message to be receiving from adults who love you! Anyway...if you spend time with pre-teen or teen girls, read it!
It was a damp and drizzly weekend, but Tuesday evening the sun came out and we had a couple more sunny days before we headed home. It was fun for the girls and I to spread our wings and stay on our own for a bit. We loved it and are already looking forward to our next trip up!
When we returned the girls were off to survival (day) camp in Girdwood. They had a lot of fun learning about making shelters, making fire, finding safe water, finding food, etc. It was a two day camp and well worth it!
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