A notable Friday

This last 12 months seems to have been full of important (or at least busy) Fridays.

Just these few weeks include: Last Friday which was the last day of school and graduation of the seniors and in two weeks we fly to Australia, on a Friday. In five weeks we will begin our long journey to Uluru . . . on a Friday.

Today is no exception in exceptional Fridays.

Today we send our middle son off to his first camp. In fact he has hardly ever been to a sleep-over in his nearly 10 years. He is excited and slightly apprehensive. We know him to be a cautious chap who doesn't like to jump into the unknown. So his courage in facing this large four-night unknown is encouraging to me.

His class award at the end of the school year was for being the class's "Thorough Thinker". So of course, he has done some research. He checked around his friends at school and knows that several of them will also be at camp. He also knows several of the leaders (US=counsellors). He'll be fine. I look forward to hearing of all his adventures when he gets home.

In the meantime we'll have a strange situation at home. Only two boys, the eldest and the youngest. It will be weird, but we have manufactured our own adventure. We head off camping ourselves on Monday (about 20 or 30 min down the road from the boys' campsite). We'll pick him up from camp on Tuesday and drop off our eldest son on Wednesday, then come home ourselves on Thursday. But we are facing almost 10 days with only two boys around. It will indeed be weird, and another milestone in the journey of parenting: children old enough to go to camp without us!